Ukrainian metalcore band Remover from Khmelnytskyi bring death-metal weight into a sound now moving in two directions, with latest single “Свинка” continuing a collaborative pet-themed record while a separate modern metalcore album develops beside it. In interview singer and guitarist Andrii Slobodianiuk tells more.
For Slobodianiuk, Remover right now is difficult to place inside one exact genre. Most of the members are drawn to metalcore, with Currents, Polaris and Architects among their reference points, but death metal also sits in the foundation, leaving the band somewhere between those impulses rather than fully inside either one.
That direction took time to appear. Remover formed in 2023, when most of the members were still new to making music as musicians, and the early songs became a way to learn what a band could be before the group could record and master everything properly.
Slobodianiuk says they often wrote the material and tested it first in concert, letting the live version exist before a finished studio recording. At first the movement was from nu metal toward metalcore, but the current writing eventually created a different problem.
Two sets of songs began pulling apart, one toward modern metalcore and the other toward a record about animals. The band tried to make those directions live inside one album, but the combination did not feel natural, so they stopped forcing it and accepted that they were making two separate records.
The animal side began almost accidentally with “Котик.” Slobodianiuk brought a riff into rehearsal, then struggled to find words that suited it until he decided to write the simplest lyric he could. Once that worked, the limitation became the idea: heavy music, direct language and one animal at the center of each song.
He does not see the animals only as characters. They also become ways of carrying human feeling without overexplaining it. In his own division, “Котик” is built around love for pets, while “Свинка” widens that affection toward the whole world, giving the project a bright emotional center even when the music stays aggressive.
Collaboration became part of the album’s structure rather than an occasional extra. Remover want every song on the pet-themed record to involve another artist, and the first two releases established that approach with Distress. Oleksandr Kovalenko added second vocals to “Котик,” while Vlad Ares added second vocals to “Свинка.”
The connection with Distress came through Remover’s bassist Ivan “Vania” Antonov, who had played with the band after its 2018 reunion in Nova Kakhovka before relocating to Khmelnytskyi following the full-scale invasion. He introduced Slobodianiuk to Kovalenko, and what began as one practical connection grew into a model for the wider album: find the presence that makes sense for a particular song and let the collaboration alter its character.
That method continues with new song “Песик.” The song has already been recorded with a Kyiv band and is waiting for final mastering. Slobodianiuk says the first wish was to find collaborators with some connection to dogs, but the more important result was how the two vocal approaches fit together, which made the collaboration work even without that literal link.
The full shape of the album is still open. Slobodianiuk hopes the pet record can become a six- or seven-song release, but there is only one additional song idea clearly in place beyond the material already moving. He is careful with deadlines, joking that after two more songs the album should at least arrive within the decade.
Language is less negotiable. Slobodianiuk sees writing in Ukrainian as part of the band’s work, especially while metal remains a smaller scene inside the country than he believes it could be. Remover hope to reach listeners beyond Ukraine, but he does not expect that ambition to remove Ukrainian from the music.
That decision also sits inside the reality of the more local scene. Slobodianiuk now counts only two or three active metal bands around Khmelnytskyi, with many earlier groups inactive and many musicians serving in the defence forces. Because he only began working as a musician in 2023, he does not pretend to offer a clean before-and-after comparison, but he is certain that maintaining a band under these conditions is harder.
Remover’s own live activity shows that pressure directly. Slobodianiuk remains in Khmelnytskyi, while the band’s guitarist has moved to Slovakia, and neither side wants to solve the distance by replacing the other. The group are therefore on pause as a gig band, but not as a writing and recording unit.
The metalcore album is further ahead on paper. Around ten modern metalcore songs have been written since 2023, but they still need to be recorded, mastered and in some cases reshaped. Slobodianiuk describes a long habit of returning to the material and trying to improve it, which has made the record both substantial and slow.
For now, the pet songs have priority partly because they have already taught listeners to expect a certain world. The band do not want to follow “Котик” and “Свинка” immediately with a sharply different modern metalcore single and make the project feel directionless. Keeping the albums separate lets each side establish its own logic before the other one arrives.
Slobodianiuk is also realistic about what decides whether either record travels. He says strong music can remain deep underground when promotion is weak, while simpler material can reach the mainstream through charisma, labels and the right visibility. For Remover, meaningful progress therefore means not only finishing songs, but finding a way for those songs to be noticed.
Looking ahead, “Песик” is the nearest concrete step, with Slobodianiuk hoping it can be completed and released during 2026 once the band’s guitarist, who also handles mastering, has time to finish it. Beyond that, the plan is deliberately patient: keep the pet-themed sequence moving, continue work on the heavier parallel album and wait for the geography of the band to allow live activity again.
Remover interview 09.08.2026
Andrii Slobodianiuk
Producer: Janne Vuorela
https://www.instagram.com/remover_band_ua/
Picture: Remover
