I think a homeless man is calling me a faggot. I’m standing in the cold outside a club in downtown Portland, Oregon, waiting for the doors to open. An employee comes out and tells a group of about 10 diehard fans, ranging from mid-20’s to late-50’s, that sound check has run late and doors won’t open until 8:30. Rushing up, I tell him I’m supposed to interview the band and, after a double-check of my ID, am allowed to slip inside. Looking over my shoulder, I realize the guy wasn’t yelling at me after all, but at a blonde Russian woman standing close by.

It is Saturday night, and I am at Berbati’s Pan for the Mumiy Troll show. The Russian outside wasn’t an exception. The crowd turns out be almost entirely Russian, but with good cause, as the group performing tonight is one of Russia’s most famous rock bands.

Mumiy Troll formed in the USSR in the early 80’s in the remote, far eastern port city of Vladivostok. The band, started by lead singer and guitarist Ilya Lagutenko, recorded and even played in people’s bedrooms during that time but didn’t really hit it big until after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Having left Russia to work in both London and China, Lagutenko returned to record and release the band’s first official album in 1997. The album, introducing the band’s signature “rokapops” sound, was a hit.

“Basically in six months, it played everywhere. So we started touring, and have continued touring since—it never stops,” chuckles Ilya.

Which leads us back to now and Mumiy Troll more than halfway through their first full American tour, in preparation for their first American release, Comrade Ambassador, an anthology of songs from their last two Russian albums.

Before the show, Lagutenko talks about the rock music scene in Vladivostok during the Soviet Union (almost non-existent), about the music in his home growing up (his mom had the “solo albums of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, but no Beatles albums, for some reason”), and the first time he heard Elvis Presley and Deep Purple, the English band that was freakishly popular in the USSR and are reportedly current Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s favorite group.

When his mom took him to a foreign film festival screening of the 1973 Malcolm McDowell film “O Lucky Man!”, Ilya knew music was for him. “To be honest, I didn’t understand anything, because I was eight or nine, but I still remember when the movie started, and you got this guy who played keyboards for the Animals [Alan Price], and he played this song, and it totally blew my mind. This image of this band playing guitars and keyboard, and I was, like, whatever it is, I want to be that guy.”

Now eight (official) albums, arena tours, and MTV Russia’s “Legend of MTV” award later, Ilya and the band are finally ready to take over America.

“You hear everywhere the world is changing, America is changing, America is more open to the world, so we have to look at things differently now. Why not Russian rock?” muses Ilya, the band having begun their tour in DC the day after the presidential inauguration.

Whether they will succeed is hard to say. But the excitement of being able to cross America—the place where rock and roll was invented—on a tour bus and play in clubs every night, Lagutenko assures me, is more than worth the effort.

When Mumiy Troll finally takes the stage, the half-capacity crowd of about 200 Russians makes up for their relatively small number with a large amount of raw energy. A giant, thuggish man with a shaved head and big trench coat throws his arm around his friend, and they both swing back and forth, totally drunk and deliriously happy. Later, more men join together in a long fraternal chorus line, swinging side to side, as Ilya and the band jam through a fast and melodic set. While bromance dominates the mood, the female fans are no less enthusiastic, loudly singing and dancing along to their favorite Russian rockers.

Ilya tells the crowd about the long journey that has brought the band from far away Vladivostok all the way to Portland. But looking out at the sea of camera phones and ecstatic faces, an outsider can wonder only one thing: why don’t they make that journey more often?