INTRODUCING 'STAR CRYSTAL'

By Iain McArthur • 2 June 2025
Once upon a time, in Chernivizi in south western Ukraine, two little girls were born, just a few years apart, but who would both go on to become international performing stars.

One of them was Milena Markova “Mila” Kunis who moved to America and became a Hollywood actress, but that’s a different story.

Susanna Radimovskaya comes from the same place but she wanted to be a very different kind of performer. As she explained to me; “it was my dream from childhood to be a musician and a rock star. I remember ‘little Susanna’ wanting to be like Tina Turner or Whitney Houston and I always wanted to sing on stage, but not like a soul singer; I wanted to scream and perform with all of my energy like Vixen or Lorraine Lewis from Femme Fatale!”

You can see and hear what Susanna is talking about in the astonishing video for the song ‘Fall in Love’, which captures her in the studio belting out the lyrics with style and class. In particular, listen out for the delightfully-accented and seductive honey trap of the spoken-word segment that precedes a magnificent band interlude reminiscent of Whitesnake’s ‘Still of the Night’.

Having also been inspired by other great 80’s bands like Scorpions, Slaughter, Dokken and Def Leppard, when it was time for Susanna to form her own rock band in 2012, she sought out like-minded musicians. All bar one of the current line-up have been with Susanna from the outset and the group initially bonded over a common love of 1980s movies like ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Rocky’ and in particular, their original soundtracks.


All of Star Crystal’s songs are written collaboratively by the group. Guitarist Alex Nasyrov was the first to join and when it comes to song-writing, he is usually the one who starts it off by bringing his cool 80s-inspiredc riffs and guitar phrases to the band. Elijah Dubchack will then layer on that essential melodic rock sparkle with his keyboards and Eugene slaps on the bass, before finally Susanna adds her voice and lyrics.



You can really hear the influences in an early song called ‘Forgotten Love’ from their 2015 debut album ‘Follow Me’. It opens with a Survivor-style keyboard intro and flows into a bright and breezy guitar riff that Susanna’s voice soars above and there are some very fluid guitar solos too. In the video (link below) the band introduce themselves and are filmed on-stage.

Whilst the core group have been together from the start, the drummer position has changed twice. Both Eugene and Susanna are very happy with their current drummer, who comes from a family of professional musicians and has a grand-father who actually teaches drumming at a music college. “Right now, we have Max” said Eugene, “and we hope that we are finished with making changes”. “We are not just musicians” explained Susanna, “we are living like family”. In fact, the whole band have relocated to Romania together. “We have not moved too far” explained Eugene, “our city was 40km from the border and it is only another 40km to where we are now, so 80km from our home town”.

Star Crystal’s second album ‘Revival of Glam’ was released in 2018 and in addition to ‘Fall in Love’, it also features ‘Dancing All Night’ – a glam-tastic song that shimmers and parps like Night Flight Orchestra and comes with a very sexy video that showcases Susanna’s sass and bears good comparison to the current trailblazers of feminine-fronted rock and metal like The Big Deal, Chez Kane and The Cassidy Paris Band.

The band have released three singles since ‘Revival of Glam’ and all of them will be included on the next album. Of those, Eugene picked out ‘Come on Baby’ as his favourite and Susanna agreed; “it’s a very sexy song”. She’s not wrong. It starts in a Shania Twain kind of way and the video features the singer in a union jack mini-dress and a signature red top hat, which she feels is “the cherry on my cake”! See what you think and also watch out for the rubber duck on the drum kit.

The 2021 single ‘Wild Wind’ shows another side of the band; a sultry power ballad worthy of inclusion on any play list and which features the lyric “this night I’m going to ride on you” – the promo video does include a horse!! There is also a very fine keyboard motif that Jonathan Cain would be proud of.

The band’s most recent single ‘Power of Love’ was released in November 2024 and their immediate priority is to produce a video to promote the song. After that, Eugene believes the band need to create and record another three songs before their third album will be complete. “We are searching for a good label” said Susanna, “but for now we are doing it all by ourselves and trying to make connections to appear at festivals”.



So far, the band have appeared in several European countries and will next be seen in Belgium and the Netherlands. Of course, I had to ask what it would take to get the band over to the UK and Scotland in particular? Susanna informed me that they have contacted a lot of bookers but so far they have been told that they need more promotion first, “so we plan to promote our 3rd album heavily so that hopefully we can come over and play for you”. Naturally, I extolled the virtues of Scotland’s own favourite festivals WinterStorm and Wildfire so who knows? I would encourage folks to check out Star Crystal’s music and videos and if we can all help promote them by liking and following their socials and playing their songs on the radio then maybe one day soon, we will get to experience them live.

My thanks to Susanna and Eugene for taking the time to chat with me on Zoom.

Iain McArthur