Cargo Records

My Resurrection

Virtuoso guitarist Nikolo Kotzev is originally from Bulgaria, but lives since 1989 in the town of Mariehamn, Finland. At the age of five, he started taking violin lessons. Nikolo became interested in rock music in his teens, and soon he started playing the guitar. He joined his first rock band at the age of fifteen.

He gained lots of pratical knowledge as a session guitarist in recording studios close to the location of his studies at the academy. Nikolo also toured Europe and especially Scandinavia playing in a top forty band before relocating to Finland.

There he joined the Swedish rock band Baltimoore led by singer Björn Lodin. They recorded two albums together before splitting up due to personal and musical differences.
After that Nikolo decided to start working on a solo project, which later became the highly acclaimed Brazen Abbot. So far four Brazen Abbot albums have been released, "Live and Learn" in 1995, "Eye of the Storm" in 1996, "Bad Religion" in 1997 and "Guilty As Sin" in 2003, featuring such renowned musicians as Joe Lynn Turner, Glenn Hughes, Göran Edman, Thomas Vikström and the Europe members John Levén, Mic Michaeli and Ian Haugland. Nikolo played guitar, violin and keyboards, produced the albums and also wrote the songs.

After the release of "Bad Religion", Nikolo started working on the rock opera "Nostradamus", writing the music, producing, mixing, engineering and playing guitar as well as a few violin solos on the double album! "Nostradamus" was released in 2001 which huge acclaim from critics and fans. During the following years Nikolo Kotzev has also produced and mixed albums for other bands including Saxon, Molly Hatchet, Company Of Snakes and Rose Tattoo.

In 2003 it was time for the first Brazen Abbot tour, featuring former Rainbow and Deep Purple singer Joe Lynn Turner on vocals. The concerts were filmed and became the main part of the documentary DVD "A Decade Of Brazen Abbot" released in 2004 as a tribute to the 10th anniversary of the project. Nikolo directed and produced the movie, which is a mix of band information, interviews, behind the scenes and of course live footage.

June 2005 sees finally the next Brazen Abbot release: the new studio album "My Resurrection". The line-up which through the years have been fairly constant now is changed. This time Nikolo employs four singers - Joe Lynn Turner (Rainbow, Deep Purple, Malmsteen), Göran Edman (Malmsteen), Tony Harnell (TNT, Starbreaker) and Erik MÃ¥rtensson (Eclipse). For the first time in the Brazen Abbot history a full-blown string orchestra of 31 people, recorded in Nikolo's home country Bulgaria, is used almost entirely throughout the record. The players are also new: Nelko Kolarov - keyboards, Wayne Banks - bass and Mattias Knutas - drums.

The resulting album is one of the year's hard rock highlights showing an immense production and amazing songwriting and performing skills from everyone involved !

Track Listing