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Ukraine's upstart metallers, Ignea, who recently signed with Napalm Records and, earlier this year, released their third full-length, Dreams Of Lands Unseen, are most certainly a band not to be missed out. With its captivating melodic metal, the band, fronted by amazing vocalist Helle Bohdanova, takes the listeners into the cinematic world. Ignea has already earned its status as a band-to-watch, and the cinematic concept album Dreams Of Lands Unseen exceeds all expectations, inviting the listener to follow them into new worlds. Formed in 2015 under the monicker Parallax, soon changed to Ignea, the band released its debut album, The Sign Of Faith, in 2017. With its sophomore album, The Realms Of Fire And Death, released in 2020, the band has already proved itself one of the bands with a lot to offer. The third (concept) album, Dreams Of Lands Unseen, inspired by the life of Ukrainian photographer and documentarian Sofia Yablonska, delivered a spectacular, modern and dynamic blend of various genres, from symphonic metal to death metal and everything in between. This autumn, the band embarked on a long European tour with the mighty industrial metallers Fear Factory, Butcher Babies, and Ghosts Of Atlantis, and on 19 November, stopped in Roncade (TV), Italy (you can check out the live report HERE). We were there and had to ask Helle some questions about the new full-length offering and Sofia Yablonska, but we also talked about the war in Ukraine and other things.
Interview with: Helle Bohdanova
Conducted by: Tomaz, Jerneja
Edited by: Jerneja
Tomaz: Hello Helle! Congratulations on the great show you offered us tonight. So, how is the tour going so far?
Helle: The tour has been amazing and very intense because it's a long one - of two months. We've already played one month of it. You have to understand that there's a lot of pre-show work, then the show, and we also have to sell the merch ourselves. It's very intense, and Fear Factory is a huge band, so sometimes we get a very big crowd, like 1000 people. So far, it has been amazing, and all the bands are very friendly. We are very grateful to be on this tour.
Tomaz: On this tour, you are mainly promoting the new album, Dreams Of Lands Unseen, which was released this spring. How are you satisfied with the album about half a year later?
Helle: Interestingly, this album is about Sofia Yablonska and travelling around the world, so until we started to travel with it, it didn't take its shape in full. Now I'm grateful we can play it live because I think this album is meant for stages and maybe for experiencing the travel on its own. I mean, we are in a new place every day, just like Sofia Yablonska was travelling. It all comes together on this tour, and I'm really glad about it. I think that an indicator that this album is good is the fact that we don't get fed up with songs. We like playing them, although we play them every night.
Jerneja: Does Sofia Yablonska have the status of a national heroine or something in Ukraine?
Helle: Unfortunately, not many people know about her, even in Ukraine. That was one of the reasons that I wanted to make an album about her. She was not only an inspiration for me, but it feels very sad that we don't learn about her at school. Pretty much only some of the Ukrainians know about her. It's not fair because she is a very inspirational figure. I read all of her books, and she was a very progressive woman for her time. She also made a footprint in travel photography. She has made the first photos of some tribes in the world but not many people know about them.
Jerneja: What do you think is the main reason she's not more recognized, at least in her native Ukraine?
Helle: The problem we have in Ukraine is that for a very long time, Russia didn't allow us to preserve our history. For example, in the past century, people were killed just for speaking Ukrainian. Also, if you read Sofia's books, she feels it too, although it was the 1930s, and she's been travelling all around the world. It's really hard, because we have been suppressed by Russia all the time, so it's only maybe now, with the war, that we are trying to dig up everything in the past and try to save it for future generations.
Jerneja: how did she die? On one of her trips?
Helle: She spent the rest of her life in France because she had a French husband, and she died there in a car crash, unfortunately. She had been travelling mainly in the 1930s and 1940s, and then she returned to France, where she handled some hotel business or something. She had three kids, and so she lived a happy family life, then she died in a car crash.
Jerneja: Have you had any contact with her grandchildren, considering Ignea dedicated a whole album to their grandmother?
Helle: No. I know they assisted with printing her books in the Ukrainian language, but they are not that active. I also don't want to interfere with their lives because they are not her children, they are her grandchildren, you know. Maybe someday I will, who knows.
Tomaz: This year also marks ten years of the band's existence, so is this tour also, in a way, an anniversary tour for you?
Helle: You know, for us, it's different because although the band has been there for ten years, we haven't toured for five years because of the pandemic and the war. We released some albums in the meantime, but I cannot say we were complete as a band since we didn't tour. That's why I cannot say that it's a proper anniversary. We should have toured last year, but it was impossible. I don't know - we have this "ten" in our minds, but it doesn't feel like "ten"; it feels like "five".
Jerneja: As Parallax, you released only one EP...
Helle: Yes, but I sometimes forget we were called like that. It's still the same band, we just changed the name because we started growing, and we figured out that there are too many bands called like that. For us, it was just a name, and then we figured that the name Ignea was closer to us, and it was a perfect time to change the name.
Jerneja: Ignis is Latin for fire (or light, depending on the context), so Ignea must have something to do with fire...
Helle: Yes, exactly. Ignea is feminine for fire, for example, it could mean fire girl, fire woman, or something like that.
Tomaz: Dreams Of Lands Unseen is your first release via the big Napalm Records. What has changed for you and how by signing with Napalm?
Helle: I think the main change was attention from the media; that's also why we are doing this interview. It's also much better with distribution. Our new album is now sold in physical stores all over the world. You know, Napalm Records has a big name, and when a band is booked for festivals, they pay more attention to you. There are some things where they gave us a bit of advice because they have been on the market for a very long time and have a lot of experience, but what I really like is, that they don't interfere with our music. So, they don't tell us what to write and accept our music as it is. I appreciate it a lot.
Tomaz: How did it come in the first place that you signed with them?
Helle: They just offered us a contract, and that's how the bands today usually got signed with labels. If a band sends an e-mail to a label, it usually goes into the trash bin simply because there are too many bands out there.
Tomaz: But why do you think they block posts of Ukrainian people? I assume they are of morale-lifting content...
Helle: See, that's the problem that we encounter. We try to scream, but we get silenced all the time. That's why it's very hard, and we have to prove as Ukrainians all the time that it's not us who attacked, but Russians. Although they committed so many crimes, it's still very hard to prove it to the world.
Jerneja: It's sad enough that there are still wars...
Helle: Exactly! I mean, some people thought it would come, but I never imagined that, in the 21st century, I'd be waking up with missiles flying above our heads, explosions and tanks.
Tomaz: And now the war in Gaza took most of the attention from Ukraine...
Helle: That's also a problem. We came to Europe and saw many meetings and strikes in the Palestinian favour. We see that the awareness of the war in Ukraine only goes down and down. The thing is, that if we fall, Russia will be a neighbour of the European Union and trust me, you don't want this neighbour.
Tomaz: It would be great if we didn't have to talk about this subject, but the fact is that there is a war in your country, and you are the first band from Ukraine we met for an interview...
Helle: It's good that you are asking this because interviews are one of the places where we can actually talk about it.
Tomaz: So, how is it living in a country where a war is going on? It's been going on for almost two years (on top of the previous eight years of tension).
Helle: Well, I think it has changed a lot, depending on where you live in Ukraine. If you are close to the frontline and the artillery can hit you, it is very dangerous because you can die at any moment. If you live further from the frontline, you have a better air defence now than, for example, one year ago. In Kyiv, we have air raid alerts pretty much every day. We have some kind of a system, so we know what is coming and how much time we have to hide in the shelter. Also, you have to understand that we still need to keep our economy running. People still have to feed their children, go to work, and study, and that's why it looks pretty much like an ordinary life. When there's an air raid alert, we go to the shelter, and everything stops. Even if the missiles strike somewhere, we have half an hour, and then we have to go back to work. That's all. It's a crazy life, but a problem is also that people from the outside say they don't see a war. We can't post about it, and one hour ago, we had an air raid, and one person was killed. That is how we live.
Tomaz: I hope you won't have to get used to it...
Helle: We already got used to it, and that is scary. It's really scary, but we don't have any other choice, and we already got so far. We are still an independent country, but we need to fight and get our lands back. We need to get more weapons because Russia isn't going anywhere, and it will continue attacking us. That's why we need to get enough weapons to fight them back. The thing is that we don't want anything from Russia, only to stay away from us.
Tomaz: I hope the war will end soon. I hope this for all the wars since they only bring blood and tears, but let's return to music. Tell me, where are the main differences between your new album, Dreams Of Lands Unseen and the previous two?
Helle: I think that the new album is a bit darker, maybe more mysterious and theatrical. We tried to evolve with every new album. For example, our keyboardist writes the music, and I write the lyrics. It took me half a year to study the subject and read all Sofia Yablonska's books and publicity about her. I did proper research and was not just imagining things but thinking through the subject. So, yeah, I don't know, I guess it's an evolution for us.
Live photos by: Tomaz
Ignea line-up:
Helle Bohdanova - vocals
Yevhenii Zhytniuk - keys
Dmytro Vinnichenko - guitars
Oleksandr Kamyshyn - bass guitars
Ivan Kholmohorov - drums
Ignea links: Official Website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube