The interview was conducted in Ukrainian and translated into English.
Scorpio: You have a new album coming out soon — the second part of a trilogy. It's called Songs to Moon; the first one was Songs to Sun. In short, what should listeners who know the first part expect from this one?
Igor: If they've already heard Songs to Sun, they may have noticed that two tracks, "Lost in the Rain" and "Quicksand", are a bit different from the overall vibe of that record. They're more introverted, gloomy, slow. That's what to expect from Songs to Moon.
I had some doubts about the material for Songs to Moon, because it didn't feel "Jesus-y" enough to me. Most of these songs were written over many years — most of them are around five or six years old. Maybe one is a bit newer, a year or two. But mostly it's material I started writing at the beginning of the pandemic, and the mood back then was not the brightest. So all of it is pretty gloomy and slow, but not in the genre sense — it's not exactly doom metal.
Only when I looked at it a little from the outside did I realize there's a lot in it that's similar to what's been happening with STONED JESUS all these years. And I was like: "Okay, this can be a STONED JESUS record, but one of the most experimental ones." I understand perfectly well that some people won't get it and will think we're doing something wrong. But with STONED JESUS I've always had this plan that every album should differ from the previous one, and within the trilogy that will be especially noticeable. Songs to Sun is hot, active, heavy — the sun, basically. Songs to Moon is introverted, dark and gloomy. And Songs to Earth will be about both sides — that's why it will have only two 20-minute songs. So if people aren't afraid of change and are curious to see the different sides of what I can do, they'll really dig what's happening in the trilogy, and on its second part, Songs to Moon.
Interesting that you've already spoiled the third album of the trilogy — both the title and the song lengths. What made you lay all your cards on the table this early?
The plan was ready probably around 2024, when I moved to Europe, changed the lineup and went through all the material that had been lying unreleased from previous years. And I was like: "Aha, this pile is heavier, this one's gloomier, and this one is just scattered ideas that could be molded into something more epic." Because I've always been a big fan of old prog rock: GENESIS, KING CRIMSON, VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR, PINK FLOYD — all of that. And then, when I heard heavier bands in that direction, like DREAM THEATER or FATES WARNING, I always wanted to make an epic of my own.
I remember when we talked about it with the label, they said it's a cool move, because you're kind of giving the fans an investment. You're telling them: "Look, you're investing in this. For the next three years, every year, you get 40 minutes of material from STONED JESUS. No jams, no weird gimmicks. You know exactly what you're getting: this album is heavy, this one is gloomy, this one is nerdy. That's it. If something doesn't suit you, come back for the next album, which will go in a different direction."
I've always liked bands that have a certain concept, a certain approach. And then there's the two-tracks-per-album thing. I remember we had just announced that in three years there'd be Songs to Earth with only two tracks — and then BLOOD INCANTATION put out Absolute Elsewhere. And I was like: "Uh, that's only two tracks too." Then literally half a year later Steven Wilson puts out The Overview — also two tracks. I was like: "What the heck?" So we didn't really get to show off the unusual format, but I hope the music itself will click with people. This fall we're barely touring, because we'll be in the studio working on Songs to Earth, which will come out around this time next year.
Cool! Let's get back to the album that's out in about a month, in early October. Thanks to Season of Mist, I've already had a chance to hear it, and it has an interesting framing. The first track is post-metal, heavier, and it kind of continues "Low" from the previous album, while the record ends with an acoustic piece. Tell us about the idea behind that framing.
Yes, you're absolutely right. That was the idea from the very beginning — to start like that, in your face. For the first time on a STONED JESUS album you hear my vocals within the first seven to ten seconds. "Under the Skin" is one of the heaviest pieces I've written. Then the album gradually gets less and less heavy, except for a little flare-up in "Jackal" somewhere in the middle. And by the end it really is just me and an acoustic guitar.
It's meant to reflect how our lyrical hero — in this case, me — goes through disintegration. You start with a ton of emotions, a ton of vocals, a ton of passion, and by the end it all becomes more and more minimalistic. And that's supposed to be the listener's reaction too. If by the end you're sitting there staring at the wall, thinking something like "Oh, aha, so that's how it is," then the album worked.
I really hope people will listen to it as an album. It's not so huge that you need to cut it into portions. 40 minutes is fine even now, when everyone has overdosed on short-form content and all that. So I hope it'll be a kind of listening session: you listen from start to finish, click your tongue and say: "Yeah, that's heavy." And if you relate to it way too much — then you should see a specialist.
Another interesting feature of the album — I did a little googling, and it seems it's the band's first fully instrumental official track: "Syzygy", which sits right in the middle. I'm not much of a space and astronomy nerd, so I looked up the term: it's when three celestial bodies — namely the Sun, the Moon and the Earth — line up. And I thought: "Oh, the third album is probably going to be Songs to Earth." Then I saw it had already been announced. I didn't get to solve the puzzle — it would've been a cool one for anyone curious enough to figure it out. So let's talk about "Syzygy" and how that instrumental sits right in the middle of the trilogy.
You've got it right. Once all three albums are out, it'll be a kind of interlude. If you listen to them back to back on streaming, there'll be an hour of music before, an hour after, and this instrumental interlude in the middle. It really is the first instrumental on a STONED JESUS album. I really like its main theme — it reminds me of old CAMEL or early OPETH, something like that. But people who've already heard it tell me it's some kind of minstrel folk, BLACKMORE'S NIGHT, I don't know. To me it still has a more melancholic feel.
There's another cool little Easter egg: three melodies played on bells. The first one, at the start, is the chorus riff of "Shadowland" from the first album of the trilogy, Songs to Sun. The second, in the middle, is a little riff from "Jackal", which comes right after the instrumental on Songs to Moon. And at the end there's a melody in 7/8 that will open the next album, Songs to Earth.
So it's all tightly connected, all very conceptual, and I'm a big fan of that kind of thing. I never liked to just sit down and listen to music. I need an idea, a concept, something that hooks me beyond the music itself. I have nothing against well-made pop music — that's really cool too. But I have a lot of respect for these little touches, the kind of thing I picked up from Mike Portnoy and all the people who love concepts in music. And I'm really glad I managed to do something like that on a STONED JESUS album. There's another thing: Songs to Sun ends with the sound of me breathing in, and Songs to Moon opens with "Under the Skin", which starts with that same breath. And the ending of Songs to Moon will flow into the beginning of Songs to Earth. That's the kind of trilogy it'll be.
Once the third album is out, is there an idea to do a vinyl box set of all three records with some cool extras?
Yes, because I still have a bunch of demos of these songs — either ones we worked through with the previous lineup, or ones I just sketched out at home. There's a demo of "Quicksand", for example, which is actually the oldest song in the whole trilogy. It was written in 2012, and I never brought it to STONED JESUS because it was too personal, too private. Only now was I ready for it to come out on an album. It came out last year, and I see a lot of people writing that they, let's say, recognized themselves in it too. It's really cool that there are people who resonate with what that song says.
So you could do a 4LP box set: the three albums, and on the fourth record all sorts of cool versions, outtakes and other stuff. But I have to be honest: it all depends on demand. If 100, 200, 500 people are really interested, then it makes sense to do it.
There's one interested person on this side of the screen. Season of Mist has an interesting situation, by the way: among their recent releases there are at least three trilogies. GREEN CARNATION just released the third album of theirs, and there's HOLISSSTIK, the new project from Tor-Helge Skei of the old black metal band MANES, who also has a lot of electronic projects, so that's more electronic music. His first trilogy album came out recently. Yours is the second album of a trilogy.
Cool. I didn't know about that guy, but I know GREEN CARNATION. I'm actually going to listen to the last part of their trilogy in the next few days, because I'm a nerd in my own way too and I follow a lot of music news and new releases. The funny thing is I'm not that much of a metal fan as such. I listen to maybe 10–12 metal bands I've always loved and don't dig much into new ones. I can listen to a new band and be like: "Aha, this isn't for me. Goodbye". I can't even name offhand the last time I discovered a metal band that I still listen to.
But everything that comes out on Season of Mist somehow feels very close to me. It's all pretty experimental, somewhere on the edge of post-black, with some electronics, some gothic rock. That's the direction of metal, so to speak, that really interests me. However it might sound — like I'm blowing my own horn, since we're on Season of Mist ourselves — it really is a label that does interesting things. Every release Friday I'm like: "Aha, what's Season of Mist got?" I should check out this guy from MANES.
It's also interesting that when I do interviews, some bands say: "Well, we're not really a typical band for..." More than one band has told me they're "not really typical for Season of Mist," because the label is supposedly more about death'n'black. I guess people formed that image from the label's typical early releases twenty years ago and think it's still the same. But this year Season of Mist even put out some American southern rock.
Last year there was a really cool band — a kind of country MASTODON, I'd say, a good one. I didn't mean they had no metal, obviously — it was mostly metal and death'n'black. But I always liked Season of Mist for their eclectic approach: they released THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, and there was this prog band in the vein of OCEANSIZE — A FAIR TO MIDLAND, fairly alternative, with cool choruses, very hooky.
Every time I dig into some old Season of Mist releases, and we meet with Michel — Michael, who heads the label — I ask him: "What happened to this band? Why didn't these guys take off? And what about these?" It's really interesting to hear it all from the inside, especially for someone who was never familiar with music labels and how the industry is supposed to work, because obviously there wasn't really any of that in Ukraine. Hearing stories from him about tour advances, nightliners, all these major-label things you'd only read about in books or seen in movies — and here it's just part of the business for people. Pretty cool.
They've also got HEILUNG, a fully folk ensemble. Let's step away from the album for a moment. I saw you started posting Instagram stories about the first reviews from people who'd heard the album through the press. It kind of tore you apart — there were emotional posts about how some people apparently didn't listen to the music at all and AI churned out a wall of text for them.
Listen, a lot of people actually wrote to me about AI, especially about the second review, I think. Literally the second message in my DMs was: "What, is this AI? Is this AI? AI written probably?" And I was like: "Damn, I don't know myself. I'm really not into this stuff."
I think the problem isn't even AI. The problem is that people don't really listen closely. I have a favorite example from one of my favorite bands — MARILLION. They started out as this very GENESIS-like, ornate prog rock with folk moments, cool arrangements and 10-minute tracks. But then they changed a lot, and by the end of the 2000s they were more like, I don't know, U2 with electronics: lots of samples, a more atmospheric sound, not so dramatic anymore. They really grew up and softened. And when they were putting out another album, their 14th or so, the press release literally said: if we see the words "prog rock", "GENESIS" and so on in reviews, we'll know you didn't listen to the album.
And I really wanted to attach something like that to Songs to Moon: if a review says something like "Stoner! Stoner as always! The guys are playing stoner-y stoner as always!", it's obvious the person didn't really listen. Damn, I think reviews like that are even worse than if someone tore the album apart, you know? If someone listened and said: "There's no stoner here! Where's the stoner? What's going on? Two out of five," I'd be happier than with these reviews that say: "Well, it's all the same as always, good old STONED JESUS." No way — this is not good old STONED JESUS at all! These are songs I even hesitated to release under the STONED JESUS name. How can this be good old STONED JESUS? I even polished some parts so it would sound more like good old STONED JESUS — and I'd still say most of the material doesn't sound like it. And we'll never have another album like Songs to Moon.
So yeah, that's why there was, as you can see, a very emotional reaction. It really got to me a bit. But on the other hand, I don't even know how much reviews matter in the music world these days. You either have to be some Anthony Fantano, so people still listen to you and your opinion carries weight with other music lovers, or it has to be in print, or some super-important old-school outlet like Pitchfork. And here the person most likely just wrote it for fun, and I'm running around, all angry, trying to bite its tail. Oh, for God's sake — good old STONED JESUS, okay, fine. As long as people listen and tell others. Then let people decide for themselves.
I think you could stick a kind of digital fingerprinting into the press release — little phrases that have no real connection to reality. If they show up in a review, then for sure the press release was just fed into ChatGPT and a review came out the other end.
I saw a review like that of Songs to Sun — just a rewritten press release. And I'm the person who mostly wrote it. Of course, we have people who do this, and I'm very grateful to them, but I try to run everything through myself as a filter, so on most things I'm, roughly speaking, a co-writer. And when you see your own phrasing, which you really sat over, just in other words in somebody's review, you think: "Yeah, that happens too".
You're something of a music critic yourself. I know that in past years you published annual album rankings on Neformat. How does having been on the other side change the way you read reviews of your own music?
Good question, I've thought about it. Because I listen to a lot more music of other kinds than what I play. If we get filed under some kind of heavy stoner or prog-adjacent thing, that's exactly the kind of music I almost never listen to, because I get enough of it at work, let's say. Some STONED JESUS songs are really fun to play and perform live, but I wouldn't listen to the studio versions anymore. I've had enough, I've heard them plenty.
I think it actually helps, because I can look at things from very different angles and approach my own material more eclectically. I know there's a part of the fanbase that would be super happy if we just put out a copy of Seven Thunders Roar every two years, with "I'm the Mountain 2", "I'm the Mountain 3", "I'm the Mountain 7" and so on. But that wouldn't suit me, and I'm very selfish in that respect. It's my own project, it's what I've done my whole life and plan to do my whole life. So I want to do it the way I want to. And I see a broader musical horizon as a plus.
Actually, in recent years I've done a little less criticism, because I noticed from other examples that when a musician goes really hard into criticism, sometimes it outweighs everything, and then people write about them as a blogger, a music reviewer who, by the way, also used to have a band. Of course I don't want that fate for myself or for STONED JESUS. So lately I mostly do a monthly recap on my Insta of what I've been listening to and show my ratings on RateYourMusic. And even there I'm not very active: I don't hang out on the forums, I don't write reviews, I just give stars. Because that's a whole different crowd too — it can be pretty toxic, and it has a peculiar taste. I stopped understanding them about five or six years ago: I go to the top charts, and it's just all these... In short, it's music for music critics, you know? A different extreme.
Because I, for example, have always been a pop fan, roughly speaking. Yes, I love music with heavy guitars, but I like it to have choruses. I was raised on THE BEATLES, and when I first heard NIRVANA, the first thing I heard was Unplugged in New York. So for a long time NIRVANA was, for me, a band with pleasant acoustic songs and catchy choruses that are easy to pick up on guitar. I was 10–12 when I heard it. So I don't really like it when it turns into music for musicians — a hundred thousand notes per second. So, getting back to your question: it's great to know your music and follow new stuff, but I'm definitely not ready to make it my profession yet.
Interesting that you mention choruses and catchy songs. After the first listen, the song that stuck with me most was "Velvet", which is written in exactly that vein.
Yes. And "Velvet" actually has an interesting story, because of that very catchy chorus. Right now the structure is: verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus. But when I first brought it to the guys in the previous STONED JESUS lineup, that catchy chorus wasn't there — the bridge did its job. And the song felt kind of unfinished. We jammed it for a while and shelved it. So the song is five years old. I wrote the chorus last spring, literally two months before we went into the studio. We worked it out with the guys on tour: sitting in a hotel room with drumsticks and plugged-in guitars, I was showing them how it all goes. And the first time we properly played it was live this summer.
And yes, I'd say it's the song from this album that will probably keep getting played. Because it always goes like this for me: however the audience reacts to a particular STONED JESUS album, there's always one song that stays in every setlist and everyone loves — even if it went unnoticed when the album came out or the reaction was different. My favorite example is "Thessalia" from Pilgrims. When it came out, there were comments like: "What is this DEFTONES stuff? What the hell? Where's our good old doom? Where's our good old stoner? What happened?" And now we play "Thessalia" and the room goes wild. Everyone remembers it; from the first notes, the first groove, they start clapping along and singing along. So I think "Velvet" is the one that will survive from Songs to Moon, because the rest of the album is really cool too, but you need to be in a certain mood to fully feel it. And yes, it's pretty different from what STONED JESUS did before.
Which STONED JESUS songs do you really love that don't work live?
Great question. Really great, because there were actual conflicts about this in previous STONED JESUS lineups, when I was trying to explain to people that I'm actually the songwriter here, and I want to put albums together from songs that don't necessarily have to be live songs. Because they shape the album's vibe, they complete its picture, and there's a certain concept — just trust me and we'll get it done.
Among those, definitely "Lost in the Rain" from Songs to Sun. In theory it can be played, but again, you're not going to play it all the time on tour, because it's a ballad: it can kill the vibe, and people can simply get bored. I can really picture some unplugged thing, with a guest keyboard player sitting with us, maybe another guitarist — a STONED JESUS quintet. That's where "Lost in the Rain" would go down great.
Another track we've never played live, and I still can barely imagine the circumstances in which it could be, is "Black Church" from The Harvest. It's my love letter to SWANS, a band I love dearly. But again, it's a very intense song that needs a certain mood, and people have to be ready for it — it can't be that you walk out, play a song and everyone claps.
Although, to be honest, I once thought the same would happen with "I'm the Mountain", because it's not doom or stoner at all: verses in 7/8, a break in 3/4, and the song is 13 minutes long. When we were recording it, I thought: "Well, that's it, I've fulfilled some ambition for myself. We'll play it a couple of times and everyone will forget about it." But as we can see, it's probably the best STONED JESUS song. So out of the top three songs I never expected to play live, "I'm the Mountain" turned out to be the big hit.
Let's get back to your Instagram posts. Another big and much more serious topic is the war in Ukraine, and the fact that from time to time you get messages like: "Hey, you're a musician, music is outside politics." And you try to get through to people that nothing is outside politics. Like in the joke: "Dad, where are we going? — Oh, to some concentration camp. I'm not interested in politics."
A classic. Honestly, I never planned to become a political commentator or an expert in all this. But the thing is, I'm from Donbas myself — I left four years before russia invaded it. So politics has always been close by.
We haven't played in russia since December 2013, but even back then, I remember, you could feel all that "big brother, little brother" attitude. I used to bring some russian stoner-doom bands to Kyiv, and you could feel this condescending vibe from them. And it's funny: right after the full-scale invasion began, some russians wrote to me and started apologizing. With others, I saw Z posts myself — deleted them and blocked them to hell. And what's interesting is that the first to apologize were the russians who have long lived abroad. They're not stewing in it there, they see all this a bit differently, and maybe they understand a bit more of what's going on.
At the start of the full-scale invasion I was very active: I posted a lot and explained a lot. I even had an Instagram tag — #ukrsplaining — for when I had to explain things that seem very obvious to me. But they're obvious to us, right? In the West, unfortunately, many people are still under the influence of russian propaganda. The russian side has always pumped billions into it. Maybe less money goes into some new missile than into getting another series on Netflix where some "good russians" do something good, so that everyone pities them and loves them.
And yes, sometimes I do have this feeling that I'm talking to a wall, because the people who understand what's going on understand it anyway. They'll like these stories regardless and send me words of support. There are even a few fans who only comment on these stories. It's actually a bit funny to me, because I'm like: "Maybe you follow me for the political news, not for everyone's beloved 'I'm the Mountain'?"
But of course there are also fans like this one guy who recently wrote: "I've been following you for decades, but it's so hard to watch you scare us with this war." A person from Germany. I live in Germany myself now, and I write back: "Dude, haven't you seen what's happening in Leipzig, the russian drones and all that? How can you even take the stance 'we must love all the villains', as the classic said?" You can't just close your eyes to it in Europe now, because it'll get worse, it'll get worse. And unfortunately it's all very closely connected: Trump is connected to it, so is Elon Musk, and all these right-wing European parties.
To be honest, I'm a little angry at myself that I wasn't politically active enough before. Because now, when you see how it's all connected, you start thinking: "Damn, I probably could have been more active earlier, spread the word and made people more aware." But on the other hand — if people don't want to be aware, they'll never be aware. So it's a never-ending job, with no final goal, because it's something you have to do constantly. And I'll always do it, because I'm Ukrainian, what happens in Ukraine matters to me, and I want to get it across to other people. I hope that for a few people it really has become clearer.
You talk to other musicians — this year you even played Hellfest, the big French festival. What questions do they have about Ukraine? How do you get your message across to your fellow musicians?
Whenever we play, for the last two and a half years we've always had a donation jar out. We've raised almost 20,000 euros over all these tours, and we always pass the money on to people we know personally. I talk about it at every show so that people donate, and that's actually not so easy, because of our audience: it's all stoner rock, second-hand rock, everyone's a hippie and "no to war." And they don't really get that if you donate to our drone today, a russian drone won't fly into your home tomorrow. So we try to collect donations for somewhat abstract goals and not say exactly what the money goes to, because sometimes, of course, it goes towards somebody's drone. But mostly it goes to dealing with the consequences of the invasion: reconstruction, the wounded.
And among musicians it's actually very noticeable — and it matches how sensible their music is. Bands I've never liked — I'm not even surprised that it's either "it's not so black and white" there, or they're straight up pro-russian. And in the bands I've always liked, the people are fine: they come up to you themselves, ask questions themselves.
Probably the coolest experience was with CULT OF LUNA. Last year we were announced for a fest together with the French band CELESTE, who had played in russia. At that point they had just announced a russia tour, and we wrote to the organizers: it's either us or them, because what is this — playing the same fest with these, ahem, musicians? And the organizers actually squeezed a French band out of a French fest, which I consider quite an achievement, because in France everything is very tight, they stick together very closely, so I really didn't expect that result.
And I see that Johannes from CULT OF LUNA was following all of this closely. He was liking the stories, writing, asking how it was going. And in his own stories he posted that he'd never share a field with those guys again: if we're at some fest, then either we won't play or CELESTE won't. He remembered that. And literally a couple of months later he wrote: "Do you want to open for us? We're doing a mini-tour in the summer." Of course we agreed, we talked — and he really gets it all. He's very pro-Ukrainian, and I don't know many people like that. There are people who get it, and that's nice, and there are people who really go all in. For example, WITHIN TEMPTATION, as far as I know, also did a track with some Ukrainian band or artist. So it's really cool that things like this are happening.
Let's stay with Ukraine, but step away from the war a little. You recently posted a photo with the vocalist of IGNEA, who also have a new album coming out soon. I also went through your YouTube channel and saw that a few years ago you posted a jam session with you on drums and the guitarist of IGNEA. How long have you been friends, and are there any plans to collaborate?
Even better — it's IGNEA's keyboard player on guitar. The whole joke was that the guitarist was on drums and the keyboard player on guitar. I've known IGNEA for a very long time. I remember they started coming to our shows around 2018 — I think it was the Pilgrims release show — and that's when we met and became friends.
What basically brought us together is that we're among those Ukrainian bands that hardly anyone knows at home, but in the West there's a big audience, and that's the audience they focus on. The thing is, again, these are musicians who listen to a lot of different music, so we can easily talk about it and be friends. But we can't go on tour together. We have our thing, they have theirs. Unfortunately, it's not a case where both fanbases will show up. Now, especially after the pandemic, people don't have that much money and want to choose. People would probably look at a tour like that and say: "Well, I'll wait until they play separately". And it would turn out that if we toured together, neither fanbase would come, and it would be a lose-lose situation for both.
But I love them very much. Their album comes out a week after ours, and I've already heard it, because when we met in Berlin we had a sort of listening session: Helle listened to our album, and I listened to theirs. Really cool!
It's great to see Ukrainian bands that, as you said, are sometimes even more popular outside Ukraine. STONED JESUS is one of those examples. For years I've seen comments under videos where Ukrainians only just find out the band is Ukrainian and write: "Oh, I've been listening to them for years and only now found out they're from Ukraine."
That's true. Again, it probably says more about the fanbase, because the music we get lumped into — stoner, psychedelia — is more about, roughly speaking, getting high and vibing to some music. So they don't expect a band with a political platform, or a band with super-experimental approaches. That's why I'm really curious what the reaction to Songs to Moon will be, because Songs to Moon is not a stoner album. And that's why I get a little triggered when I see all these reviews. Well, not all of them, actually — there were only two. We'll see what the next ones are like.
And yes, for a while I also got a bit disappointed when I saw comments like: "How come they don't know? How can you not know?" But then again — you shouldn't judge everyone by yourself. I'm the kind of nerd who, when I start listening to a band, immediately runs to Wikipedia to read about them, checks RateYourMusic, what their previous albums were, what the vocalist said, where and with whom they toured, and so on. For other people it's sometimes just one track in a playlist, and that's it. For many people we're probably a one-song band — "I'm the Mountain". I've also seen comments like: "Wow! STONED JESUS are back!" And I'm sitting there like: "Damn, we never went anywhere. We tour, we're artists, we put out albums." But for some people we probably stayed back somewhere in 2012–2013. Still, it's good that for them we're back. Fine by me.
Here's a hack, then. If you want Igor to promote your review on his Instagram, write that it's good old prog rock and nothing ever changes — and the link is guaranteed a spot in his stories.
Good old stoner, yeah, yeah.
When will people hear your music live? You said you're heading into the studio now to record the third album of the trilogy.
We'll have festivals next year. I think in the spring we'll play a few one-off dates — maybe not even in Europe. Let's leave it at that for now, I won't spoil it any further. The big fall tour of Europe will be about a year from now. Next year is also the 15th anniversary of Seven Thunders Roar. I know there's big demand for all these anniversary dates. We were supposed to play the tenth anniversary of Seven Thunders Roar, but we only managed one date in Kyiv before the full-scale invasion began. I know there's demand for that album, and maybe we'll play it at some fests. But on tour we'll focus more on the new material, on songs from the trilogy.
I've always liked that kind of conceptual approach. The best example for me is IRON MAIDEN. They really do era-based tours. Right now they're doing a tour of the first eight albums with Bruce, up to Fear of the Dark, before he left. I hope they'll do the later era next, and I really want to go to that one too, because I, for example, like 2000s MAIDEN maybe even more than '80s MAIDEN. Or about the same, because it's just great! Dance of Death and especially Brave New World — a really cool album.
I've always liked that approach. At the same time, I know we'll still play "I'm the Mountain", for example. So just because a new era is coming doesn't mean we won't play the hits. It was especially cool when we toured Pilgrims, our fourth album. When it came out, there was also a reaction like: "Ugh, where's the doom, where's the stoner? This isn't the STONED JESUS I'm used to." I don't even know what STONED JESUS should be like for you to get used to it. In my head, STONED JESUS keeps changing from album to album. So seeing comments like that was a bit funny to me, but then again, my perception of STONED JESUS is very different from other people's. As many people, as many perceptions.
And it was really cool when we went on that tour and played seven songs from Pilgrims, plus "Here Come the Robots", "Black Woods" and "I'm the Mountain" — only three songs, one from each previous album. And still the reaction was very positive: people came up after the show and said: "Wow! Now I understand this album. Thank you so much for playing it in full." I thought that's a really interesting approach from tour to tour, and I'll try to keep it.
Yeah, I went to see MAIDEN here on the tour when they played everything from the '80s. You're probably a rare person who likes 2000s MAIDEN more than the '80s.
About the same, I'd say. Again, you know that setlist — how many times can you hear "The Trooper"? I'd like to hear, say, "Blood Brothers", although they do play "Blood Brothers" pretty often too. I'd like to hear "Out of the Silent Planet". I really love that track — it was big back then, there's a music video for it — and I just don't understand why they don't play it live. A great track, a great chorus, great everything. I don't know why it's not in the setlists.
Thank you for your time and your answers. Glory to Ukraine!
Glory to the heroes!
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STONED JESUS at Season of Mist.
Songs to Moon is out October 16, 2026 on Season of Mist.
Thanks to Will Yarbrough at Season of Mist for arranging this interview.
Photo: Liss Eulenherz
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