Our full interview with Igor Sydorenko, founder and frontman of STONED JESUS, is now live on themetallist.com in English and Ukrainian, with the video version on our YouTube channel. We spoke ahead of Songs to Moon, the second part of the Songs to… trilogy, out October 16 on Season of Mist.
Igor doesn't sell it as business as usual. Most of the songs date back five or six years, to the start of the pandemic, and he admits he doubted they were "Jesus-y" enough to carry the band's name. The record opens with "Under the Skin", one of the heaviest things he has written, and slowly strips itself down until it's just his voice and an acoustic guitar. "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," he told us.
Which is why the first reviews stung. Igor says a review that tore the album apart would sit better with him than one more "good old STONED JESUS": "These are songs I even hesitated to release under the STONED JESUS name. How can this be good old STONED JESUS?"
Also in the interview
- why he laid out the whole trilogy plan up front, and why Songs to Earth will hold just two 20-minute songs
- "Syzygy", the first instrumental in the band's history, and the bell melodies hidden in it that tie all three albums together
- how "Velvet" got its chorus five years after it was written, two months before the studio
- his years as a music critic and the reviews that read like AI
- the "music is outside politics" messages, and almost 20,000 euros raised through the donation jar at their shows
- how CELESTE got dropped from a French festival, and the CULT OF LUNA tour invitation that followed
- the friendship with IGNEA, the 15th anniversary of Seven Thunders Roar, and IRON MAIDEN-style era tours
We've been following the Songs to Moon campaign all year, from the "Under the Skin" single to the "Velvet" video and "Jackal". This is the story behind the record.
Read the full interview: STONED JESUS: Songs to Moon Is Not "Good Old STONED JESUS"
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