Photo: courtesy of the band

I saw that the band already has concerts scheduled for the next few months. Are you deliberately returning to your favourite destinations?

I can’t say that we are returning to our favourite places, our tour organiser makes bookings for us, and the bookings are based on the places and cities where we have quite a big fan base. Our music is quite warmly perceived in Western Europe. 

In an interview a few years ago you said that the Metal scene is tiny in Ukraine when compared to Europe. Has it changed or is it still the same now? 

Yeah, it changed… it became 10 times worse. How can it become better during the full-scale war? It was horrible – and then with the war it becomes better? No, it became much worse. But we are going to Europe where we have a big fan base, where fans are waiting for us, with big scenes, good scenes, good clubs, especially in Munich. We will be performing at this big club where we will put on a good performance. Why are we ignoring the rest of Europe? I don’t know. But we had our tours announced before the full-scale war, we had announcements of tours in Italy, Spain and the UK. But all of that was cancelled first because of Covid, then because of the fucking Russians, so now we are getting back to full activity on well-trodden paths. 

What are the plans for 2025 as a whole? Or are those dates everything that is planned so far? 

What are the plans… to survive! To plan in Ukraine is a very difficult task because tomorrow a missile strikes you if you plan or don’t plan – it won’t matter. And accordingly we are releasing a new album this year. In September 2025 we have a release. Soon we will be announcing a date. I can already say when, we just haven’t announced it officially on our social pages.  

I remember that every album release coincides with a historic date; how about this album? 

To be honest, with this album, everything is much more transparent, when our label had a big time slot was the best time. Of course, we can tie the release of each of our albums to the end of the first world war, but I think it already got boring. Several timelines were used, but now it’s enough. Accordingly, 25th September is a good date as it’s at the start of Autumn, the start of the touring season. 

Accordingly, our plan is to release an album in September and somewhere at the end of October, start of November we will go on a big European tour. So that’s the plan. At the momentwe don’t have lots of concerts. We have a festival in Mexico announced for December 2025, and in Europe, at the moment, we have some other festivals announced. But this is connected to the reason that we are an unpredictable band, it is tough to work, because bands from Ukraine don’t know whether they can leave the country or not. There can always be some issuesor tricks, and you won’t simply be able to leave for a concert.  

There were travel problems with your stage props and your microphone. Do these issues still exist? 

No, we didn’t have problems as such because of my rifle, they appeared only with the full-scale war. Because on the border Polish control started to shake us down. Earlier we were able to travel freely but now Poland has implemented very strict controls. They search every Ukrainian man to protect themselves from incoming illegal weapons or terrorists. Overall, from their point of view, it’s the right practice to protect themselves. Is it cool for us? Of course not. But from the beginning of the full-scale war we don’t travel with our stage decorations. I don’t even simply take helmets, so as not to explain each time at the border that it’s a replica and so on. Each time, when we travel out of Ukraine, we go through x-rays, we get the full inspection of our car, everything’s taken out, then packed back in… 

You have a new album in September 2025. Will you stick to the themes of WW1 or will the current war also be mentioned? 

No, in albums we stick only to the topics of WW1. The band is created only around this topic and we don’t plan to change it. The whole album is built on the life of a Ukrainian soldier from Lviv during WW1 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his life from the start in Lviv, when Moscow took Lviv in 1914, through Carpathia and the Carpathian winter operation. He was then thrown onto the Italian frontline, he spent two years at the Italian front, got captured, got back through Austria and back home to Ukraine in 1919 when the Ukraine-Polish war happened, and so that’s his life.

Regarding our war, I want to talk about the life of Ukrainians and show that we were always torn by different Empires. We were captured, they tried to divide our land, but Ukrainians always fought against the Empire and wanted to live on their own land. So for this album I wrote, not quite a book but I would call it an illustrated album with a big history of this soldier. Just his history, his letters, where he was, what happened every year, what happened in his personal life, how he got captured and his escape. Quite a lot of topics, and all this will be able to be read. A book will also be published to coincide with the release of the album.  

And all this is your work or were other collaborators brought in when it came to the writing? 

Of course, I write the lyrics and all the texts, and the book is written by me. 

Is there a difference between fans in Europe and Ukraine? 

Of course. In Europe it’s an old big culture – rock music – that takes its roots back to the Beatles and further. And Black Sabbath with the rest crystallised this culture, and for them it’s normal. People who attend European festivals are usually more than 40 or 50 years old. So for them it’s part of their lives, part of what they are fans of, it is normal, because this culture exists there for over 50 years.

We are a post-Soviet country, where this culture didn’t in fact evolve. We didn’t get the segmented scene, yes we have cool bands that play punk-rock, cool bands that play hardcore, cool bands that play industrial, Black Metal and so on. Did a crystallised scene appear? No it didn’t. Did the huge demand for this music appear? No, it didn’t. That’s why comparing Europe or even our neighbour Poland, where in the ‘80s they already had hundreds of punk bands, and huge punk festivals were held. Can you imagine Ukraine in the ‘80s having a punk festival?

Generally, people didn’t even know punk rock as music and no one played. We started playing live in 1988-1989, when the USSR was stagnating, and it was possible to do so. For me, for example, the absolute opening was, when I picked up a vinyl record, Lyublyana – Hardcore (1982-1985) In 1982 in Lyublyana in little Slovenia there were already lots of hardcore and punk bands, that already started being the best punk and hardcore bands. We differ from them in culture, mentality. For them it’s a big part of their culture and history. For us, unfortunately, not.

Do you always prefer to perform in Europe rather than in Ukraine? 

Yes, and it’s not because I don’t like Ukraine but because our music in the frame of Ukraine times is less interesting. It’s not interesting for Ukrainians because Ukrainians don’t know much about the First World War. Unfortunately, for Ukrainians it wasn’t our war. However, it should have been ours. It’s an important topic for us, but it was pushed out and destroyed by Soviet power. Soviet power did everything so that we wouldn’t remember that war, the losses of Russia in that war and so on. 

History was imposed on us: we were always taught how our “grandads fought” and that they “captured Berlin” during WW2 and so on. This shit was pushed on us and many generations of Ukrainians were brought up with this shit. But the real fight for one’s state, whether it was for the UPR(Ukrainian People’s Republic 1918), or in the Ukrainian SichRiflemen unit during the Ukrainian-Polish war, starting from year 1914 until the year 1921, was pushed out from folk memory. When you are going to Belgium, Germany, France, for example, in every town you will find memorials for WWI. In every town in Britain there are still memorials for soldiers of WWI. In churches everywhere you can find memorial signs, it’s everywhere, everyone remembers. 

So has music taken over your life? 

I would love that – and on top to make money out of it. But in reality –  no. Every band member works at their full-time jobs, me in IT, another guitarist is an IT manager, the bassist is a server manager for another IT company. So everyone has a job, where we make money to live, to put it into music and be able to tour with it.  Profits from touring go to the army. To live in Ukraine by making music is impossible. If we hadtaken the paths of rats and left Ukraine at the start of the full-scale war and then just did music, yes probably we would be able to live off music. But when on one side there is money and on the other your country is turning into shit, then yes, maybe money is not as important. I would rather grind on with my work and make money out of IT than leave Ukraine. That’s it. 

Where did you learn to sing? 

Sing? I scream with a silly voice and I don’t know if it can be called “singing”. Evolution gave male monkeys a vocal apparatus, that can make such noises, so I’m using it.