Death Pill: Defiance In Self
Ukrainian hardcore punks DEATH PILL have overcome adversity due to the war in their country to bring out their latest album Sologamy. The trio that consists of Mariana Navrotskaya (lead vocals/guitar), Natalya Seryakova (bass) and Anastasiya Khomenko (drums) faced difficulties due to the ongoing Russian invasion. The fact that the album is coming out in the face of such adversity is itself a triumph. We caught up with Anastasiya to hear all about the challenges they faced in making Sologamy and how DEATH PILL will never stop with their sheer defiance, even in the face of massive adversity.
We start off by addressing those challenges which have been beset by the war in DEATH PILL‘s home country of Ukraine as Anastasiya tells us. “When we released our debut album, everything was almost ready, except the art. So when the war started, we finished the musical part, but this album, it was next level difficulty because we are separated all over the world. Natalya, she’s in Australia. I’m in Barcelona. Mariana is still in Kyiv and sometimes didn’t have electricity because of Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure. It was very challenging, and we had only one opportunity when we were all in London last summer. We had some rehearsals, and played all together. After that, we edited it all together but on the next album, I hope we can do it differently.”
Despite these setbacks, Anastasiya and DEATH PILL are all understandably proud of Sologamy. “We are very proud that we finished it and did not fuck up our band while we were doing it, because a lot of things were really complicated.”
We then dive into Sologamy and it’s themes as Anastasiya explains. “It’s about self accepting. We all have this shadow inside us that we fear but when you really accept it, you become a whole person. We don’t think that you should wait to be a couple and only when you meet someone, you become a whole thing. It’s about that you are already whole. it’s about facing your fears and accepting them.”
The integrity of the music of DEATH PILL has always been important, none more so than right now, as Anastasiya tells us. “We’re always about honestly, and we are talking about things that make people uncomfortable. We don’t want to talk about things that don’t have a reaction. We want to talk with people about things that really worry them, the about things that really are terrifying. We faced a lot of pain in our life, lot of in different kind of levels, beginning from our childhood and ending with war so it’s our method to relieve all this pain and all this suffering by talking about it loudly.”
We then talked about the reaction to DEATH PILL, their music and their message. “Without our music, we are not the people who we are. Our music, it’s our weapon,” she says. “We are not on the frontline right now, but we use our music like a weapon, because it’s the only thing that we can help with. It has helped us to live forward. It helps our listeners, and also it helps our country because we can speak about it, we can show people who we are, who are Ukrainians, and we can ask them to help us, because we really need it.”
DEATH PILL are also the subject of a documentary Go Your Way as Anastasiya details. “We’re still surprised that we have movie about us! This movie has been shown at several movie festivals and won first place at a documentary festival in Los Angeles. We’re waiting for permission when it will be put on the streaming platforms so we can show and share it with all of our friends and all our listeners. It’s very important, I cry every time when I watch it. We want to share this reality with others.”
With the documentary focussing on the band’s first UK tour, Anastasiya told us about the possibility of more live dates, albeit with understandable uncertainty. “We don’t know yet. We are working now with our tour organisers. We want to go to the UK and Europe, and we will see what people will ask us to do.”
Talk the turned to anti war songs with Anastasiya highlighting an important release this year when it comes to the plight of their home country. “Our favourite album this year is our homies from the band, OBRIJ which means horizon in Ukrainian. They released an album called Йосип (Joseph) as in Stalin, which is anti war, anti Soviet, anti Russian. They did deep work showing the world how Soviets eliminate Ukrainians, for our language, for our culture, and it is the most anti war, anti Russian album that I ever heard. It’s a brilliant work, very cool lyrics. You deserve to pay attention to this album.”
We conclude this important interview with Anastasiya giving an impassioned and defiant final message to DEATH PILL fans in the UK and hopes to see them soon. “First of all, we are very thankful, because we always feel support from people in the UK. It’s not only about our music, it’s also about supporting us in this war.”
Sologamy is out now via New Heavy Sounds. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS122 here:
For more information on DEATH PILL like their official page on Facebook.