Ukrainian romantic metal band Season of Melancholy return with In Sleep, their second full-length album, shaping gothic weight, post-rock space, heavy metal drive and modern electronic details around material written through normal touring life, pandemic isolation and wartime disruption. In interview guitarists Pavlo Hushchin and Andrii Harashchenko and drummer Pavlo Shpak tell more.
For Shpak, the band’s story has two beginnings. The name and early material reach further back, but he sees 2016 as the moment when the right people came together and Season of Melancholy became a working band with its own direction.
That path led to debut album Amber in 2020. The album still matters strongly to Hushchin, who says it was the first Season of Melancholy music he heard when he entered the band and that he loved it with his whole heart, but he hears In Sleep as something clearly different.
The difference is partly time itself. Hushchin says the new record was written across three periods: a normal musician’s life of concerts and festivals, the uncertainty of the pandemic, and then the full-scale war in Ukraine. For him those periods gave the album three different emotional sensitivities rather than one stable color.
That makes In Sleep less like a clean follow-up and more like a document of repeated interruption and return. Shpak says some of the material reaches back to 2018, and the band felt it simply had to be released, not as a grand conceptual statement, but because working in Ukraine has given every unfinished thing a different urgency.
The physical circumstances around the record never stayed outside the songs. Harashchenko talks about working with no electricity and through air alarms, while Hushchin remembers the studio, and sometimes home, as a small piece of normal life inside a world where many normal things had disappeared.
Musically, the band still keep the term romantic metal, but not because every song obeys it. Shpak says In Sleep moves through gothic, post-rock, heavy metal, nu metal and even a little dubstep, and that the label remains useful mostly because it gives a name to something the band themselves do not want to narrow too much.
That openness also comes from how they understand their roots. Finnish dark and melodic rock is close to them, and Shpak points naturally toward HIM, The 69 Eyes, Charon, Sentenced, Children of Bodom and the Finnish love metal scene as music that has long felt familiar to Season of Melancholy.
At the same time, the band were not interested in making music that sounded designed by somebody else’s rulebook. Hushchin says the sound comes from the soul more than from a production plan, and Harashchenko frames it as writing outside borders, even when the result is not always the safest or most correct option.
Still, production became an important part of the album’s new shape. Shpak says the band wanted to bring a slightly more pop-oriented clarity into the record without losing the rock and metal foundation, which led them toward a producer more associated with Ukrainian pop, but with an old-school heavy metal ear.
The title itself carries the record’s darker center. In Sleep reflects on the idea of leaving the world while sleeping, without goodbyes or peace made beforehand, and that image gradually became something larger and more unsettling than the romantic thought it may once have seemed to be.
“Ghost” became one of the songs where Hushchin hears the most of himself. He points to the melodic guitar parts and the mystical atmosphere, saying the music continues the idea of the song rather than simply decorating it. For the band, it also connects back to the earlier Season of Melancholy feeling around Amber.
Shpak also returns to “Ghost” when talking about the album’s emotional side, but his other choice is “Keep the Night.” He hears it as a very different kind of song, more driven and almost party-like, with a dance energy that moves the band away from the most melancholic part of its identity without cutting the thread completely.
“Keep the Night” was also one of the easier pieces to begin. Hushchin says its main parts appeared quickly, almost like a one-day idea, although the band later changed the vocal melodies and lyrics. Some of the original guitar material eventually moved into electronic textures, which became part of the song’s final character.
For Harashchenko, “Down in Rage” stands out because it brings Ukrainian poetry into the album. The song carries rock and roll movement, heavy guitars, a post-metal bridge and a small amount of Ukrainian folk color, but the most important moment came when Shpak read his Ukrainian text over the music. Hushchin remembers that first take as the one that gave him goosebumps.
The song also shows how hard the band could be on its own material. “Down in Rage” passed through many versions, at an earlier point sounding much closer to punk rock, before the band reshaped it into its final form. Shpak says later attempts could not improve on the first emotional recording of the Ukrainian part, so that original take stayed.
“Inmate” sits closer to heavy metal with a gothic shade around it. Shpak describes it as a song with a link back to Amber, not only musically but through lyrical details around gold, shades and amber itself, as if the character is trying to preserve love, memory or something too close to be allowed to disappear.
Language became one of the album’s larger decisions. The record includes Ukrainian songs “T.Y.CH.I.YA.” and “Probach…”, and the band say writing in Ukrainian is not automatically easier for them. Shpak describes it as a narrow line, because they wanted the songs to feel honest rather than forced.
For Harashchenko, that decision also has cultural weight. He says Russia wants to destroy Ukrainian culture and language, which makes the Ukrainian songs on the album important in a way that goes beyond style. Hushchin adds that it also brings the band closer to Ukrainian audiences and festivals, but not only as strategy, because Shpak’s lyrics had become something the band wanted inside the music.
Looking ahead, the band are in a difficult position. Hushchin says they want to present the music properly to listeners, especially in Europe, but not every member can leave Ukraine for shows. For now the plan is to release In Sleep digitally and keep building through singles and videos while waiting for the chance to play the material abroad.
Those plans have already been interrupted before. The band had hoped to reach Mystic Festival in Poland and later discussed a small European tour, but the pandemic, war and travel restrictions pushed those ideas away. Shpak still talks about Finland with visible warmth, naming Tavastia venue in Helsinki as a dream venue, while the rest of the band stay fixed on the simpler hope that someday they can bring this album out of the internet and into concert halls.
Season Of Melancholy interview 05.07.2026
Pavlo Hushchin, Pavlo Shpak & Andrii Harashchenko
Producer: Janne Vuorela
https://www.instagram.com/season_of_melancholy_official
Picture: Phil Deckrow / Season Of Melancholy
