Our interview with Joe and Alina, the duo behind the Glasgow-based Slava Ukraine Metal Fundraiser, is now live on themetallist.com in English and Ukrainian, with the video version on our YouTube channel. This one isn't a band interview: Joe is a Glasgow promoter and SAOR's manager, and Alina is a guitarist from Kharkiv who studied music in Edinburgh. Together they have been putting on metal gigs for Ukraine since 2022.
It started with a SAOR show in Kharkiv in 2019. "I basically fell in love with the country then," Joe told us. When russia launched its full-scale invasion three years later, he remembered "a really cool guitar player who lives in Edinburgh, who I'm sure is Ukrainian" and tracked Alina down on social media. Their first gig sold out a week in advance and raised more than £2,000.
It was supposed to be a one-off. "I thought it would last a few weeks, then a few months, then a year," Alina says. Almost five years and around ten events later, Slava Ukraine runs gigs, Ukrainian bakery and merch markets and festival stalls from Wanlockhead to Estonia, and on December 4 brings 1914 to Ivory Blacks in Glasgow for the band's first-ever Scottish show.
Also in the interview
- why 1914's 2023 UK plans fell through, and how a drink with Dmytro in Lviv finally brought the band to Scotland
- an exclusive: who's supporting 1914 at Ivory Blacks
- where the money goes, from On Guard UA to Ukrainian Victory Campaign, and why they only back causes whose reports they can see
- why Joe thinks they're probably the only ones still consistently doing metal concerts for Ukraine in the UK
- pro-russian hecklers at the Edinburgh demos, and a woman in a "From russia with love" T-shirt
- Alina's trip home to Kharkiv and Dnipro: Shaheds, KABs and a barbecue during an air-raid siren
- a quick-fire round: Zhyvchyk or Irn-Bru, Obolon or Tennent's, salo or black pudding, and a Scotch egg in Lviv that was "too healthy"
1914 were our first interview of the year — read it here — and our talk with SAOR's Andy Marshall, whom Joe manages, came right after.
1914 play Ivory Blacks, Glasgow, on Friday, December 4, 2026. All proceeds go to Ukraine. Tickets
Read the full interview: SLAVA UKRAINE METAL FUNDRAISER: Five Years of Scottish Metal for Ukraine
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