Biography by Gary Hill Born in Bulgaria, Nikolo Kotzev has lived in Finland since 1989. He is a brilliant guitarist and violin player. He worked for many years as a session musician. He was involved in the rock group Baltimoore, which was just him and Bjorn Lodin. That group released two albums, 1992's Double Density and Thoughts for Food the following year. In 1995, he recorded under the name of Brazen Abbot, releasing Live and Learn. The second Brazen Abbot disc, Eye of the Storm, was released in 1996. 1997 saw the release of Bad Religion under the same moniker. The next year, Kotzev started working on his most ambitious project, the double-disc rock opera Nostradamus. That album did not get released until 2001.