Dead Rooster or Mertvy Piven (Ukrainian: Мертвий Півень) was a Ukrainian rock band that was formed by Lyubomyr Futorsky in 1989. The first concert was held in 1990 at the first Vyvykh festival. Their debut album Eto was recorded in 1991, at the end of the Chervona Ruta festival (named for the flower Chervona ruta), where the group took first prize in the category of performers' art songs. Dead Rooster began as an acoustic band. During the second half of the 1990s, they evolved into a grunge/art-rock band, though their music cannot be described by one particular style. Dead Rooster has changed personnel several times.
In 2009, their song "Kiss" ("Potsilunok") was featured in the soundtrack of Cold Souls, an American film directed by Sophie Barthes.
Name origin
The history of the band's name is connected with the Stary Lviv cafe, where they often met. At the entrance to the institution hung a weather vane (an iron figure of a rooster), which they called dead. Hence, the idea of the name "Dead Rooster" arose.[1]