“It’s a dialogue, and we’re sitting face to face” — Vøvk on their new album Litera
Neformat spoke with the Ukrainian post-metal and progressive rock band Vøvk about Litera, their first album in six years, the personal in it, and the decoding of its symbolism-packed lyrics.
After years of painstaking work and a hellish streak of obstacles, the conceptual album Litera finally sees the light of day. Considering the band’s contribution to this massive piece with several feats, an almost complete lineup change, the official rebranding from Vovk to Vøvk, a failed search for a label to release it, and their first serious steps into professional promotion, the musicians certainly have reasons for the six-year wait their listeners endured. Realizing just how much of a luxury time is during the war, they rushed this important release. It’s a kind of diary where personal and Ukrainian landscapes unfold together during the most difficult period in history.
We spoke with the band’s founder, vocalist, and bassist, Sasha, and guitarist Yehor, to tune in as precisely as possible to the meanings and perception of the LP.
Let’s start with something paradoxical (in a good way) for me: after your debut album Lair (2019), you didn’t release anything bigger than a single, and even those irregularly. At the same time, your popularity didn’t just fade, but somehow grew: you managed to go on two European tours, including the one with Stoned Jesus, play at one of Ukraine’s biggest festivals, Faine Misto, and give plenty of standalone shows. How did you manage to keep the band’s name afloat this whole time?
Sasha: We kept the band alive by making sure not to miss chances to perform. The recording kept getting delayed because we wanted to make it truly large-scale. It is important to us. And we don’t really trust the small formats. That’s why we didn’t release singles until the album was ready. But actually, the delays began with the lineup change after our first European tour. Then we started regaining our form and… COVID hit, followed by yet another lineup change. This lineup with Zhenia (drums) and Yehor came together in January 2022.
Yehor: We literally upgraded my guitar setup, and the very next day, the Russian invasion started. Just as we were about to get things going…
From left to right: Zhenia, Sasha, Yehor
Do you still not take this streak of obstacles personally?:)
Sasha: I actually have a theory about that! It’s not visible to the public, but this release has always been surrounded by difficulties and f*ckups. We tried to hide it all the way, and if nobody noticed, that means we’re handling it. Even when we set the release date, October 3, and handed it over to distributors, I stumbled upon an Instagram video from some blogger saying, “DON’T RELEASE music on this date: October 3!” It’s because of Taylor Swift’s release. Probably, we’re not her competitors, but it's still funny.
Right, I don’t think your audience has much of a dilemma there. Talking seriously, do you feel like you’ve lost part of your audience over the years, or that there are still your people waiting for new music from you?
Sasha: Actually, yes, there are. It’s been interesting to see how our audience renewed itself. We wanted to have a complete story from start to finish before presenting music to it.
Yehor: It’s about making sure people hear exactly what we want to say.
Sasha: Yes, it’s a dialogue, and we’re sitting face to face. We choose words carefully so the listener understands and can respond.
photo by Alina Pleska
I don’t hear often about that approach: usually, artists use creativity to express emotions or balance their inner state. And about this complete story you mentioned: how did you know it was forming? That it wasn’t just singles, but the album? Since the themes in your songs seem different and could exist separately.
Sasha: I saw it like a series: the album is the season, each song is an episode. If it’s an old-school sitcom like Friends, you can watch one episode without the rest. Unlike that, modern shows demand you watch one episode after another. We found a balance so that each of our "episodes" can stand alone, but together they form a season you want to watch from beginning to end without spoiling the finale. It’s not about a literal plot but about the feeling, the emotional sequence.
When the guys joined, I already had a tracklist in mind: how it should start, how it should end, literally the order of songs to preserve the mood we wanted to convey.
Yehor, since Sasha mostly wrote the album himself, did you and Zhenia have enough space to contribute, or was there no need given the material?
Yehor: At that time, I wasn’t confident in my place in the band yet, or whether my edits would even make sense, and yes, most of the music was already written when we joined. For me, Vøvk is a huge stage in my life. It’s the first band where I started playing guitar at all and formed as a guitarist, thanks to being here and to Vøvk’s music itself. Before this, I played bass in OOZE, and guitar was just a hobby without a distinct playing style. Once I joined Vøvk, I faced pretty complex music. At first, it was really tough to learn everything, but over time, I adapted so much that now Vøvk’s genre is basically my genre, the one I only play on guitar. Eventually, that gave me the freedom to add my own touch to the album, but honestly, I already liked everything. So I barely made changes, just left my imprint. But Zhenia contributed a lot of his drumming and style, and most discussions about edits were about the drums.
Sasha: Sometimes we can discuss a part for ages before we even play it, just to make sure we’re on the same page and see it the same way. In our music, we don’t aim to showcase individual expression in parts but to trigger specific feelings in listeners through rhythmic and melodic shifts. These discussions can take even more time than playing itself.
And the lyrics, I assume, were written solely by you?
Sasha: Yes, I wrote them, but we always discussed them together. I liked being steered if I got stuck, because it was hard to find non-trivial themes worth talking about.
Why was it important to find non-trivial themes?
Sasha: Vøvk’s art has always had this aesthetic that doesn’t speak directly but hides real-life motifs in associations and metaphors. At the same time, we didn’t want to just pick motifs off the surface. While we were working on the album, the full-scale war was already raging, and there was no point in writing about something else. But we still searched for borderline emotional markers, layering metaphors over them.
It was difficult because there wasn’t much time to process emotions. The war starts, and you’re focused on your family, friends who are already fighting, and also keeping up with the news. Everyone lived through that: you’re forced to be in reality, but just to sit down and reflect on what you feel in that moment is impossible. And we didn’t want to be short-lived: like, “Well, now I’ll sit down right now and write all I think about it right away.”
photo by Alina Pleska
Yehor: So this “steering” Sasha seek meant he’d bring us lyrics for a song, and we’d share how we felt, what reactions they stirred in us. He built on that. Personally, I really liked EVERYTHING Sasha wrote.
Sasha: But sometimes even after that I’d think: 'Mmm, no, that’s not it.' That was the case with the first two songs on the album — my partner, Anna Zotova, helped a lot with them. She’s a translator of Polish poetry, and I consulted her often. That was a very interesting experience, and I’d even recommend it: ask someone to look at your lyrics, edit them, especially if writing isn’t your main profession.
By the way, you said on the Halas podcast that your lyrics have plenty of references to various works and phenomena. If we strip those away, what personal, original, straight-from-you things can we find in the lyrics?
Sasha: Basically, every song is tied to real life. For example, the song Promin (“Ray”), recorded with Johannes Persson of Cult of Luna, comes from a childhood memory. I often stayed with my dad at a sanatorium in the Ternopil region. Sometimes we’d walk to a pond, and to get there we had to cross a vast wheat field, almost endless. For me, that was always what I associated with Ukraine, with our land. It stuck with me for life. But now, when we see news about Kherson farmers harvesting in fields not fully demined, it creates a contrast that is in the song. A calming landscape we want and love to see, but scarred, looking completely different now.
The song Iskra (“Spark”) is more about everyday life. It’s about how, under the stress of war layered on top of pandemic stress, we sometimes don’t talk to our loved ones, keeping emotions and negativity inside… until someone says the wrong word and it bursts out like a spark igniting a dry field. It sweeps everything away, even if you never meant to offend or lash out.
Is that from personal experience or just observing others?
Sasha: In short, the first.
How do you think, when people read the lyrics, they’ll easily pick up on what you meant?
Sasha: It’d be great if they did! I’d be very pleased. But it’s also valuable when they ask what we meant. Sometimes a small detail can act like a key to deciphering.
Am I right to assume from your excitement and seriousness that Litera is Vøvk’s magnum opus?
Sasha: I think it is, at least for now.
Yehor: Honestly, I can’t wait for it to come out. We’ve been sitting on this material for so long. At the same time, it’s pretty scary: what will happen, how will people react? We can’t guarantee or predict any interest.
Even before the album's release, Ukrainian and foreign critics praised Litera
Sasha: But we guarantee we gave it our absolute best.
It’s also hard not to notice how much effort you put into promoting it.
Yehor: That’s a sore spot :)
Sasha: Unfortunately, algorithms are cruel. They definitely force us to post more than we’d like, to put more energy into it. And the measure of success nowadays, sadly, is likes and reposts, or streams. In Ukraine, Kontrabass helps us with promotion. Thanks to them, we can free up energy to think about framing, about how to tell this story better. It’s still not about the music itself, but about what surrounds it, complements it, and highlights certain things. We chose a graphic direction, working with artists Diogo Soares and Anton Shiferson, who designed the cover. And we want to stay consistent: if we decided this is the path, we stick to it, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but that’s the way.
Lastly, could each of you share your favorite track from the album?
Yehor: For me, it’s the final track — Okean.
Sasha: Hm, I thought you’d say another one.
Yehor: Another one I like to play. But this one is my favorite to listen to.
Sasha: Okay, then I’ll choose Mur. Before this, I was going to say the same as Yehor.
Yehor: And we already know which one is Zhenia’s — Leleka (ed. — confirmed).
For now, the band has announced a Ukrainian tour as well as a showcase performance at Ukrainian Music Lab in Bucharest. At the time of this interview, they were knee-deep in paperwork to prepare for the trip.
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