A little over a thousand years ago, the young Queen Olga of Kyiv enacted a brutal, four-part revenge against a rival kingdom after they murdered her husband (which was, incidentally, how she ascended to the throne in the first place, but that’s neither here nor there). As you may have guessed, the final act of this revenge involved the use of messenger sparrows with burning brands attached to their legs to set fire to the city in which her remaining enemies had barricaded themselves.

For some reason, despite her talent for hellacious murder, she was canonized alongside her equally violent grandson, Vladimir I, who force-converted the Rus’ to Orthodox Christianity because he wanted to add the Patriarch’s daughter to his collection of wives (re: harem). It didn’t work, so he invaded Byzantium instead. Isn’t history glorious?

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the history of the actual band, but who really cares about our backstory anyway? It’s pretty boring compared to Olga’s brutal revenge.

But if you’re really curious, here’s the short version: a couple of disgruntled 30somethings decided they wanted to blow the dust off their respective instruments and raise some hell…so here we are.