Noviot Početok

Noviot Početok ("The New Beginning") is a punk rock and melodic hardcore band from Skopje, North Macedonia. It started in 2002 under the name Morfium and took its present name in 2005. Its sound draws on the skate punk and West Coast punk of the 1990s, with a strong hardcore edge in the early years, and its lyrics deal mostly with social and political themes alongside many personal and emotional ones. Since 2021 the band has used its name together with the English one, The Beginnings.

Singer and guitarist Filip Tasevski has led the band from the start. Guitarist Nikola Isailovski joined in 2005, bassist Aleksandar Petrovski played from 2007 to 2012 and returned in 2018, Ile Lulevski has been the drummer since 2015, and guitarist Emil Todorov completes the line-up. Most of the records came out on the band's own DIY label, Sixtynine Records.

The first album, Evolucijata bi trebalo da započne sega..., came out in 2006. Agnozija followed on Enterprise Records on 15 May 2009, and its title song was used in the film omnibus Skopje Remixed. Melancholic Machine was released on 24 February 2012 and Jas sum zemja in April 2015, the band's first album on vinyl. In 2018 the band released I Am Dirt as The Beginnings, its first record in English, made of reworked favourites from the earlier albums; the American punk webzine Scene Point Blank called them Macedonia's longest-running punk band. Endless Endeavors, with Macedonian and English titles, followed on 10 February 2023.

Noviot Početok is best known for energetic concerts. The band has toured Serbia and Croatia (2009), the Balkans and Europe (2012), Bulgaria and Greece (2015) and Germany (2018), and has played EXIT in Novi Sad, Dirty Old Festival in Croatia, Alarm and D Festival at home and FFUD Fest in Slovakia. It also played the music for the Macedonian film Pankot ne e mrtov (Punk Is Not Dead).

Its videos include "Brza fonija", the first one, "Omraza", "Parada", "Agnozija", "Dopir", "Tamu živeam", "Nadrealni prikazni", "Kauč kral", "Jadi od lešot svoj", "Otrov" and "Crno-belo", and from the latest album "Gavranot" and the anti-war song "Krv za zname".