Valery Alexandrovich Kipelov is a Russian heavy metal singer and the leader of the band named after him. He was born in 1958, and has been the frontman of russian heavy metal legend Aria for seventeen years. Also, in 1997 he and Sergey Mavrin recorded duet album "Dark Ages", that included super-hit "Ya Svoboden" ("I Am Free").
In 2002 scandal divided Aria to halfs. Kipelov, Terentyev and Maniakin, joined by Sergey Mavrin, started their new band, entitled in honour of their leader. They played songs from "Dark Ages" and those of Aria's songs that was written by some of them. In 2003 Terentiev left the band to start his own project Arteria. A short while later Kipelov released new single "Babylon" and shot a video for it. In 2004 Kipelov was awarded as Best Rock Project by MTV Russia. Unfortunately, it was time of farewell for Mavrin, who came back to his solo career. He was - temporarily - replaced by Victor Smolsky (Rage), but replacements slowed recording work, so new album "Rivers of Times" was released only in 2005. Smolsky also featured in music video for "Ya Zdes" (I am Here). After completing the tour with Kipelov, Victor came back to Rage and his position was filled by Vecheslav Molchanov (ex-Legion). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.