Grega Habič is a guitar ace from Jesenice of a kind they don’t make anymore. A seasoned, versatile guitar virtuoso who’s one of a kind. Unique. He’s counted among the most active Slovenian musicians, and the adjective “independent” fits him like a key in a lock. On his self-made musical path, Grega has strung together six instrumental albums, and then with the seventh, the newest, out on July 1, 2020, again self-released and titled Vrane, he went for a noticeable artistic about-face. He recorded a vocal album. It’s also the first real album where the label “band” album truly comes to the fore. An album by GHB, a band that had previously lived only on stages. Now it lives on a new album too, and by the look of it, that’s how it’ll stay going forward. With “Vrane” (RockLine review), Grega has opened up a pile of new artistic starting points and dared himself into new musical horizons. In this new creative sphere he showed plenty of maturity and held on to all of his own artistic originality.
Location: Ljubljana / Točka 213 / Slovenia
Date: July 24, 2020
RockLine: Only two years passed between the new »Vrane« and the previous album »Songs of Breathing Freely« (RockLine review), and the new album brings a real artistic shift compared to the musical direction you’ve followed so far. Among other things, GHB suddenly became a vocal band.
Grega: I met Nina (Nina Bauman, vocalist, ed. note). If I’d met her earlier, I’d have started writing the kind of music that’s on “Vrane” earlier too. I’d occasionally written music like that, but I never found the right singer to make it happen.
RockLine: Right. A few of your songs from the past had vocals.
Grega: True. I tried those ideas out with vocals. For example with Jesse Adams, who I’ve had a long-running collaboration with, both on my records and his. But vocally he’s more at home in rap, he does well in metal too, but anything else is tough. What we’re creating now would’ve been impossible with Jesse. So the main reason was Nina. Well, the other one is that I’ve gotten a bit older and, as they say, more mature and a little calmer. The energy I used to channel pretty aggressively into criticizing the world, I’d rather use on this album for more conciliatory tones. But given the current situation in the world, I get the feeling a rebellious note will soon be back in my composing.
RockLine: These shifts are welcome, at least in terms of surprise, if not also in terms of exploring yourself as a musical artist, because you’re probing new expressive horizons, as far as your current musical vision reaches. At this moment. Right now.
Grega: Exactly. When I think that we recorded six instrumental albums in a row, it was high time for a new step, a new artistic challenge, a new musical story. I’d written a huge amount of guitar music and felt a kind of saturation, so it was time to set myself a new challenge. In my instrumentals the guitar dominates, sort of standing in for vocals now and then, but that’s not it. It’s not the same. A human voice is a human voice and nothing can replace it.
Klemen: Considering we switched to a different system of composing on the new album, bringing in vocals was pretty much unavoidable.
Grega: Yes. You can’t replace a voice with instruments. And of course I’m talking about a vocalist of Nina’s caliber, who’s a truly phenomenal singer. That includes her mastery of backing vocals, which meant there was no real need for keyboards this time either.
RockLine: So the album “Vrane” is a kind of artistic transition. Will you keep exploring in this direction on future studio albums too?
Grega: Absolutely. The band’s lineup is ideal for vocal-driven music. Nina also brought drummer Damjan Mule over from Panda. On top of that, John F. Doe guitarist Aleš Svetina joined us. But of course, at the very core of GHB, freedom of expression has always come first. Where the musical waters will carry us, we’ll see. But the vocals stay.
Klemen: Now that we have Aleš, thirds come into play too, and everything else two guitars in a band make possible.
Grega: Exactly. Instrumentally, too, we can be a lot more precise now. With a guitarist like Aleš, it’s easier to reproduce the music from our records, where quite a few guitars are recorded. For quite a while we played GHB as a trio, and because of that certain things got lost live.
RockLine: The new album offers several genres. The songs veer away from each other stylistically.
Grega: In the past, too, we always tried our hand at all sorts of genres, and we were always pretty varied. It depends on the mood while writing songs, but the challenge of composing has to be there, at least for me. And of course, I hope you can feel through my music that it’s me, no matter the style.
RockLine: You’re one of the few Slovenian musicians who keeps up consistency when it comes to regularly releasing new albums. New original music. Meaning you put out albums at normal two-to-three-year intervals, of course. That something new was cooking this time was already hinted at by the song Ljubav Nije Stih, which came out, I think, sometime in spring last year, sung in Serbo-Croatian with singer Blažka Udir. The video is a lot of fun too.
Grega: Yeah, in that in-between period, when there wasn’t really a proper GHB as such, we were actually still making music. That was the period after our longtime drummer Blaž Soklič left and we all needed a bit more fun and relaxation. In that time Blažka also took part in the song Breathing Freely, which we made a video for back then as well. We had a great time, but it didn’t last long.
RockLine: Jesenice used to boast a serious creative pulse when it came to metal and rock. How is it today? Besides GHB, how many bands are still “moving” there?
Grega: The only ones that come to mind right now are Within Destruction, 30 Stopinj V Senci and Samuel Blues. There are a couple more bands playing covers, which is better than nothing, but that’s not exactly creative by my standards. Otherwise, as far as music goes, the current scene in our neck of the woods is pretty dismal. Jesenice still doesn’t have a proper music club where young and old up-and-comers could present their music. Maybe that’s partly why the scene is so modest right now. But we do have the most shopping centers per capita in all of Slovenia. I think it’s safe to say music and culture in general aren’t exactly top of the list for the gentlemen at city hall.
Klemen: There’s also the band Kabaret 5, which plays covers.
RockLine: The last two tracks on Vrane are very dark and theatrical, melancholic, especially Ad Infinitum, where Nina surprises with that scream at the end of the song.
Grega: Like I said, it depends on how you’re feeling at the moment you’re creating. Conceptually, the album “Vrane” is at its core a love story. Love is the strongest emotion humankind has, and like everything it has two sides; from the bliss it brings to destructiveness and melancholy. The last two songs chronicle the latter. I’m lucky that Nina can interpret both poles with her voice, screams included.
RockLine: Klemen, you’re seen as a kind of biblical patriarch of rock’n’roll on the Slovenian scene. You breathed the eighties with one of the first thrash metal bands in Slovenia, Game Over, and you’ve probably known Grega for a big part of your life. Tell me. Grega is truly a multilayered musician, and the ideas he works with are very different. How do you manage to keep up with him, and how do you two communicate through all these musical composing challenges?
Klemen: If you want to play with Grega, you have to practice a lot. I practice a lot. All the time. As for the last record, at least from my point of view, it was all a bit easier. The songs aren’t as complex as before. Especially now that singing has joined us too. What we’re creating now and our new approach to music, I really like it.
RockLine: And you, Nina, how did you click with Grega and the others?
Nina: It all started in 2018. Actually through Facebook. One day Klemen invited me to the space where GHB rehearse, which they call the Kevder. The chemistry kicked in right away. We clicked immediately. Personality-wise and in how we interpret music. First we recorded the track Nad nama.
Grega: Rehearsals with this crew are a whole different song from before. You can feel we’re on the same wavelength, and as a result we play much better too.
RockLine: On the new album you managed to hold on to your eclecticism. You got a completely different album out of yourself, yet still one that carries all the essential trademarks the GHB name stands for.
Grega: That was essential. We prepared 16 songs for the new album and then made a selection. That is, we picked the best of what we’d created. Mainly I was focused on this: if something sounded too generic to me, it had no business being on this album. Some of them were decent songs but sounded too “Slovenian.” We steered clear of that.
RockLine: What counts as “Slovenian” in this case?
Grega: Say, wanting to sound like some other musician or like whatever’s popular at the moment.
Nina: Personally, it was really important to me to step out of the box and, this way with GHB, which is a completely different musical story from, say, Panda, try myself out in other musical spheres too. That means I can use my voice in different ways. It’s always been a challenge for me to try different genres; from pop, jazz, rock, I even have experience with Slovenian folk-pop. So being in a band of GHB’s caliber is a challenge for me. And Grega, I have to admit, gave me extra confidence when it comes to expressing myself, which shows a lot in Panda too. I started to express myself more easily, I loosened up. I admit, at a certain point I was lacking a bit of confidence, and now I’ve become even more my own person …
Grega: Yes. Nina is a rocker at heart. And I think Damjan is too. In Panda he can’t drum the way he can in GHB. We’re just a bit of a harder-edged band. With us he can floor it and drum without limits. We clicked with Damjan right away too. Instantly.
RockLine: How come Damjan and not some other drummer?
Grega: Nina sorted that out.
Nina: I basically lured him into GHB rehearsals.
RockLine: Okay, drums. You used to have a habit of “clicking” them in all by yourself. What’s new on the new album, has anything changed?
Grega: I always wanted a drummer in the studio. Everyone I’d worked with up to now was a pretty good drummer, but we never got around to actual studio drum recordings … For example, Blaž (Blaž Soklič, ed. note) was a really great drummer, but …
Klemen: … his head wasn’t completely in our music.
Grega: Now we have Damjan, who fits perfectly with everything we’re taking on, and with him I believe we’ll finally get real drums on future studio recordings too.
Nina: I was honestly rooting for Damjan. I insisted he had to become the new GHB drummer. I felt the guys would click with Damjan. And I usually have good intuition.
Grega: Personality-wise too. A great guy and an excellent drummer with a completely his own playing style, which is priceless.
RockLine: And what about Aleš Svetina? His father once played in Heavy Company?
Grega: Just like his father, Aleš is an excellent guitarist and very calm, easygoing by nature. That last part is especially important when there are two guitarists in a band, since they quite often tend to have a slightly too pronounced ego, and things can quickly turn into needless competition. I think we’re an ideal pair on guitars, because he plays a bit more laid-back and I play a bit sharper.
RockLine: You’ve leveled up in video production too. There’s someone else with you. A quiet, invisible sixth member of the band?
Grega: Mitja Ploj. An artist in the true sense of the word. He’s a Styrian who lives in Jesenice, and a longtime friend of mine. He takes care of video production for us, and he designed the album cover. He handles our official merch, T-shirts, designing motifs. Mitja is part of our team, and his status is effectively that of a GHB member.
RockLine: Given the situation we’re in with this “coronism,” the band had to adapt. With concerts pretty much paralyzed, on the other hand there’s more room for creating new music.
Nina: We’re thinking about livestreaming a concert from the space where we rehearse.
Grega: The situation on that front is soul-crushing. Right now we’re in outstanding form. I’d argue I’ve never had a lineup that played this well performance-wise. It’s a shame it’s so hard to get on stage now. Right now.
RockLine: Grega, how did you handle the vocal lines? Did you write them and then pass them on to Nina, or did you give her freedom and she shaped her own vocal lines herself?
Grega: No no, here I gave Nina total freedom.
Nina: Creating vocal lines inside an instrumental is a unique kind of challenge. There’s no room for “faking it.” But Grega and I are on the same wavelength, and it very rarely happens that we don’t have the same idea or the same view of a vocal line.
RockLine: It’s probably a completely new experience, though, that you yourself had to hold back now and then, this time in favor of the vocals. Well, not everywhere, but there must have been some adjusting. Did Nina coax out of you, this way, guitar solutions that surprised even you, that you hadn’t expected?
Grega: Definitely. There was adjusting. In a way, though, recording guitars was easier this time, since a large part of the music was filled by Nina’s vocals. The Slovenian language on the album, and making sure we didn’t stray into a generic Slovenian sound, took the most effort.
Nina: The music isn’t generic, and the lyrics aren’t banal. I love that.
RockLine: How do you feel about playing abroad someday?
Grega: I feel that with the latest album and Nina’s vocals we’ve gotten a lot closer to the general audience, and now anything is possible. I’d be happiest playing in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, because people there are more emotional and so closer to me. Let’s be surprised.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Mitja Ploj (promo photos) & Jernej Vene (interview photo)
