In 2021 we had the previous album ‘Where Fear And Weapons Meet’. A lot of things happened for the worse after that. That must have changed your personal life as well. What happened in positive sense and in negative sense after that album release?
When we released ‘Where Fear And Weapons Meet’, we had a lot of plans about touring with this album. The western booking agencies were preparing for us a huge amount of gigs and events, but we lost everything and we had to cancel it, because the full invasion started. Of course it affected us and hit us hard, because you know… it is a war. You cannot be unaffected if you are a Ukraine civilian and stay in the country and do not run away. So a lot of things have actually changed, because you know I am Oberleutnant. I am split with my daughter, during the invasion I sent her to the peaceful Europe, because you know it is not safe here, because every day there are drones, cruise missiles, and so on. That is why all in all three years I haven’t seen my daughter here. We borrowed a lot of our friends. Unfortunately we have a huge military cemetery in our hometown (actually in every town in Ukraine). It is really a huge catastrophe. Our guitar player is now in the army, but we are still alive, so it is not bad at all in these circumstances (chuckles). The whole life has changed, but you know, most people in Europe wonder when I tell them that the war did not start three years ago in 2022. We face war more than eleven years now. It started in 2014 with the Krim peninsula and with de Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk oblast). The Russians killed a lot of our soldiers in 2015. We live more than eleven years face to face with war and live in it. This invasion is just killing everything, that’s all. Literally every 1914 album was recorded and printed and released during the war.

I admire you because you can go on making music under these circumstances. It might free your mind a bit from the negative feelings…
Nope. Wrong direction, because it is not about freeing my mind, but rather, probably about express everything that I have inside of me, every emotional stuff, like anger, pain, despair, a lot of aggression and everything. I just spit it in the face of the listener doing this album. We have a lot of anger and I try to express it and when we recorded this album: no I cannot switch between music or war, because for example, we even recorded this album without one of our guitar players, because he was in the army and every time drone attacks and blackouts and so on. We had to stop several times in the studio, because there was no electricity. You cannot switch, because… of course we are not in the trenches. In the trenches it is a different situation. You are fighting for your life 24/7, but here, in Ukraine, there is no safe or peaceful place. Forgetting for a few hours about war is impossible, because you have a lot of anger and you try to explain your feelings, you try to explain your emotions during this singing session.

I remember the former time, about ‘Where Fear And Weapons Meet’, you said that this album was still about hope. Hope to survive. What is this album about in essence? Does it have a main emotion?
If the previous one was about the will to survive and hope, this one is about brotherhood. Band of brothers, this strange brotherhood and on the other hand a huge part of love. It is about love. Even if you are listening to this album, you will probably get a lot of lyrics, like I want to embrace my daughter, embrace my wife, I am tired of this, I want to go back home, that is the general line. In the first part of the album, we have a few songs about this blood rage, about imperial war like ‘yes, let us kill our enemies’, about blood rage and of course about brotherhood because everyone is involved in it. But the second part of the album, we call it ‘the doom trilogy’. It is about love, about being tired of this war. I want to go back home, I want to see my daughter, I want to feel a normal life, like regular people. I am tired of the death around me. I have a lot of family who need love and I want to spread it. Yes, this album is about love. And you know what? When I wrote this album, I just used a lot of my personal emotions and a lot of my personal situation and I am just like a bridge. I put my personal feelings into the lyrics. I am not tired of war because I am not a soldier, but I am tired of going to funerals and losing friends, I am tired of being under the shelling every day, and so on. Human brace can adopt and absorb everything. You can even survive North Pole or the hottest place on earth, even under the everyday shelling, but basically in general you will just take it like one big stone which tries to slash you, something like this.

The album starts with ‘War In’ and ends with ‘War Out’, just like the previous one, with music of that time. What happens next?
This album starts with that music, because all the events, all the stories started in 1914 with the story of the imperial soldier from our hometown Lemberg (Lviv) and his war path, his story during this dreadful war. The album finishes with the first historical recording of the Ukrainian anthem and this  recording came from 1916. This is the first official recording of the Ukrainian anthems. That is why I placed it in ‘War Out’, because the story begins with this imperial braveness, such as ‘we are all imperial soldiers, let us kill our enemies’. And finishes with ‘I am back in Ukraine, because this is my land and I must protect it and I embrace my daughter’. The finished circle it is. It is about a lyrical hero and he is travelling across everything, during the complete story. In the end he died actually in Ukraine. Everything for him begins in Ukraine and he makes a huge round across the Carpathian mountains, Poland, Italy, France, Austria, Hungary and then back to Ukraine and he died there. The circle is closed.

What is ‘the siege of Przemysl’?
It is a Slavic naming, so probably it could be a little bit complicated to pronounce it (chuckles). For us, for Slavic people, perhaps some Dutch words are impossible. This is the first song and this is the first main battle. For us, Przemysl is located near our hometown Lemberg, around 75 kilometres from here and when the Russians invaded my hometown, all troupes were put out of the way or relocated or retreated, you can use what you want in this case, let us call it retreat and they were relocated in the Przemysl fortress and the huge siege begins. That is why I started with this song, because it was the main and huge battle in the beginning. This blood rage with the first wounded, with the first canons and the shelling and so on, thousands and thousands of dead people, so it affects him. Of course Przemysl’ was the longest siege in the modern war history in the WW I. There were no such longer sieges in the human history. Przemysl Fortress was the third biggest fortress in Europe, after Rotterdam and after Antwerpen. It is the third biggest fort in Europe, that is why they hit hard.

Then we have ‘Easter Battle For The Zwinin Ridge’…
(chuckles) Okay, we in Ukraine, we call it Zwenin or Zwinin (right pronunciation). It is not a huge mountain in the Carpathian mountains near our hometown Lemberg. Actually something like 125 km. It is one hour driving from Lemberg to the Carpathian mountains and one of the epic battles of the WW I. First of all, the reason why I decided to make a whole album about a Ukrainian soldier with a lot of information about the Eastern Front, because mostly in Europe people don’t give a fuck about Eastern Front and Ukrainian history in it. They have zero knowledge about it. Mostly in Europe, you know about Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele and that’s it. I even call it the Verdun trademark. For instance, the Carpathian winter operation, which is our next song, about the winter operation, is one of the biggest battles of the First World War. Not even of the Eastern Front, but of the First World War, if we talk about losses, more than two millions were lost. If you will count, for example Verdun, it is one million. If you read a little bit more about this Carpathian winter operation, you will realize that, from both sides, the most losses were two millions of people. I experienced it, because I am a war archaeologist and every time when I am visiting the Carpathian mountains, you can see the shells and the bombs just lying on the soil and you can pick it up every time.