— «My Dark Desires» is your next full-length album. Let’s start the conversation with it!
(where, when was it released, how is it different from the previous ones, how was the work on it carried out…)
Druknroll: In order not to break tradition (a good tradition of DRUKNROLL is to release full-length albums every two years), the album was released on December 24, 2022 (we didn’t want to transfer such a mass to the next year) on Polygon Records, the CD was released in February on Dark East Productions! As Astarte said, on this album we looked beyond the edge of mental dysphoria (now my brain started to swim a little from these words…) To put it in a word, the work on the album was brisk, first we hammered heavy stuff into our brains, and now we’re hammering it into our fans!
— The fact that your album turned out mentally unbalanced this time is not only me who noticed… Are there any reasons or is it just age?
Druknroll: It’s quite possible, maybe they messed around with the lyrics about psychoneuroses, but on the other hand, it seems not, everything is transparent and quite logical… Yes, real bipolar has come out, although it’s better to attribute it to age!
– And still, maybe you can tell a little about the lyrics? It’s not always possible to understand what you sing in English… For example, the track “Welcome to Mars” is clearly not an advertising propaganda piece by Elon Musk, right?
Druknroll: Yes, I was afraid of this question about the meaning of this song. Of course, here my Mars is my space, my inner world, like, then I found a good rhyme: hell-spell, I think how easy it is with the translation, hell is understandable, and spell is sang,
I sang about hell, only after the album was released I found out that spell is a spell! But, as they say, you can’t erase words from a song, the answer can be found in this line from the lyrics:
My Mars, no meaning, no buzz… But, in general, each text is inspired by some memories, for example, Sorrow is dedicated to my father-in-law, who passed away in 2021, Disharmony is dedicated to Arno Babajanyan and Muslim Magomayev and their famous work Nocturne, My Black Envy is generally personal…
— DRUKNROLL has a large baggage of releases, and concert activity is completely at zero. Therefore, I am sure that you concentrate all your efforts on studio activities, so the question is: do you try to find new horizons in heavy music in each new album or has the direction been chosen long ago?
Druknroll: The direction, of course, has long been chosen, here was a funny incident, a bell was needed in the track The Heroes of the War, we tried a lot of midi-not that, and then our sound engineer Knip took a laptop, a microphone and disappeared for 15 minutes. Across the street from our studio there was a temple, where he recorded the bell live – the sound was just super, it was included in the track. Now, driving by, I hear the bell (and it pounded for 4 blocks) and immediately return to that track, an unforgettable feeling! What is this, new horizons or old school?
– Well, analog sound is always nice! In my opinion, it is very wonderful when such features are sprinkled into the album without embarrassment – well, agree!
(it would be nice to tell here about the features of the recording, for example …)
Druknroll: Yes, I want to tell separately about the work with drums, now I can’t bring myself to call it a drum 
machine! As you know, DRUKNROLL has had electronic drums since 2018 and, frankly, listeners weren’t thrilled with their early work. On the 2022 album, only a pro can tell whether the drums are live or not (by the overheads, of course)! The principle is this: libraries of drums recorded live by the best drummers in the world are now appearing, we take a piece of a song and look for a similar piece of live drums and insert it, this is, of course, painstaking but interesting work. We can say without pathos that DRUKNROLL was played by the best drummers in the world!
— And how are things with the DRUKNROLL line-up now? As far as I remember, it used to be your solo project…
Druknroll: A solo project is a flexible concept and although I am the author of the lyrics, music and the engine of the entire project, I have always had a great team working with me! Alexander Uzhas is always on vocals, maybe with rare exceptions, Denis has been doing complex solo parts for about five years now, Oleg is in charge of the computers and the studio (he is a jack of all trades – solos, keys, drums, he can do anything), Diman also helps with the recording (vocals-drums), in short, the work is in full swing, DRUKNROLL is working and each member of the team makes his own unique contribution!
— By the way, about “Drakenroll”: where did this name come from? A free interpretation of a famous slogan?
Druknroll: I prefer a slightly perverted version of FUCK’N’DRUK’N’ROCK’N’ROLL!!! Somehow it just became the motto of the group! It’s also strange that Google translated this phrase into Russian, but there is something in it too – F–K, DRUK-N-ROCK-N-ROLL!!! Here, especially, F–K, what he meant – to drink, to mess around, to puke, I’ll say more, almost any associations that immediately come to mind with the name of the group, everything, in principle, is correct!
— In life, you are all rock’n’roll badasses, or nerds in sweaters? ))
Druknroll: More like nerds, but in my soul (I’ll only speak for myself) I’m a real abrigan or obrygan, I googled it again, abrigan is a dirty shit-punk or an Aryan in a shabby leather jacket with cheap beer… Well, maybe there is some truth here, if you throw out the words – shit-punk, Aryan, leather jacket, dirty!
— Maybe that’s why you don’t go on stage? Or is it precisely in spite of this?
(sarcasm, of course)))
Druknroll: Here, as they say, it’s a completely different story. The project itself was created as a studio project and there was no goal to do concerts until the concept changed, and Denis is from another city, but who knows, maybe a broom will arrive and we will warm it up… that’s what I was dreaming about, although I really want to!
— Yeah, of course, it’s boring without live shows, but I noticed that DRUKNROLL are very active in participating in all sorts of thematic compilations, they are frequent guests on Internet radio all over the world… Will the movement continue in this direction?
Druknroll: Yes, you get to the root of it! We respect the compilations, but, in fact, we wanted there to be more of them! We are frequent guests of the “Proryv” compilation, Vitaly Novozhilov is pushing a clear format, includes his band and other interesting bands in the compilation! We also recently gave a short interview to the fearless Italian guys from the LupOnAir radio show on Radioerre.it! And in conclusion I want to say how easy it is to recognize a cool metal band – if the liver is shaking – good music! So, friends, shake your liver and hair more and DRUKNROLL will help you!
F–K, DRUK-N-ROCK-N-ROLL!!!