Singled Out: Stoned Jesus' Thessalia

09-07-2018

Ukrainian rockers Stoned Jesus released their new album "Pilgrims" today (Sept. 7th) and to celebrate we asked them to tell us about the track "Thessalia". Here is the story:

And here we go - the first polarizing song in Stoned Jesus canon! Was it the first though? Of course it wasn't. Back in 2011 when we released "Stormy Monday" EP some people were like "this sucks, I want my "Black Woods" now". Then, when "Here Come the Robots" dropped in 2014, some people were like "this is too punky, I want something like "Bright Like the Morning" instead". And now this - we're releasing an angsty grungy song, and all of a sudden we're not a stoner rock band anymore.

Well I got bad news for y'all - we never were. Not stoner metal, not doom metal, not southern rock, not desert rock, not whatever-the-niche one would want to put us in. I was trying to explain our genre-bending approach in hundreds of interviews, but hey who the heck reads 'em, amirite. So of course anything different from "Mountain" or "Black Woods" would be a shock for people who don't really care about our artistic growth, about band's progress. Actually the very term "progstoner" I use lately to try to describe our newest material means we're indeed in the stonerscene but we wanna progress,we want to take risks, to experiment - and to take you with us on this trip, of course. There's no fun in releasing the same album time and time again, over and over - at least for us.

I hear you say: "You could've progressed without writing nu-metal songs, couldn't ya?" I dunno, man. We also had a near-industrial one ("Black Church"), a punky one ("Drunk Adn Horny"), an acoustic one ("Headley Grange"), and so on. But I as a writer don't think in genres - I think in songs, really. We're not like "let's put some djent chugging into this chillwave beat", nope. Are you hating on the genre without actually listening close enough to the song itself? Well too bad because, again - we don't play genre(s), we play songs.

And there's this song, but there are also six other songs on this album, and boy they're all different. You could dance to one, you could headbang to another, you would cry to that particular one. Why they're even on the same album then? Probably because they're written and performed by the same three dudes; most of them share the same lyrical theme; their mood is generally the same, even some melodies and arrangements are based on similar ideas. We'd like to believe this is something called identity, and it has nothing to do with the genre. It is something we respect the most in artists like David Bowie, King Crimson, Swans, Mastodon, Paradise Lost, etc. - you just knowthis is them when you hear them. And that's something we want to work on the hardest. And we'd appreciate you joining us on this quest for finding our recognizable style!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!