The Slovenian heavy metal band SkyEye was founded seven years ago by guitarist Grega Stalowsky, bassist Primož Lovšin and singer Jan Leščanec. Later (in 2016), guitarist Marko Kavčnik and drummer Jurij Nograšek joined the lineup.
In 2018, SkyEye put out their first album, Digital God, with twelve tracks that mirror the times we live in. Their second album is already on the horizon. In October 2020, the guys signed with the up-and-coming German label Reaper Entertainment Europe, and for a while now we’ve been able to stream the singles Constellation and Detonate on “digital music services”. Just today, the title track Soldiers of Light saw the light of day too, sent off with these words:
“Sadly, there’s so much ‘crap’ in the world right now, truth is dying, the world is falling apart and we’re more divided than ever. That’s why we need to let the light back into our lives. Our torch burns in the dark to drive the shadows out of our lives with music.” A song with a positive message, then. Light will beat the darkness. The album, out June 25, 2021, can be pre-ordered HERE.
While waiting for the new story the band is telling, we sat down with singer Jan Leščanec.
Let me start with early adolescence — the time when you’re searching for yourself the most, and also the time when most of us found our way into a particular musical style. What was the key moment or song when you said “that’s it, I want to do this too”?
Since most people know me as a “heavy metaller,” my answer will probably surprise a lot of folks. As a kid, or an early teenager, I didn’t want to do the things that were “in” at the time, especially when it came to listening to music, clothes and so on. I didn’t want to be one of many. I was just a kind of quiet rebel, one against the majority, but I didn’t make a big public show of it. I was in my own world, and the biggest part of that world was music.
From late childhood until about 18, I listened almost exclusively to classical music. I spent whole afternoons and plenty of nights glued to Radio ARS, recording snippets of the mighty themes of symphonic works onto my cassette recorder. I recorded more than 30 tapes, and a single one could hold over 100 different musical excerpts or pieces. I was hooked on mighty classical symphonies, mostly from the Romantic era, but I couldn’t stand chamber music at all, and operas, with a few exceptions, never really did much for me either.
In my high school years I started borrowing music CDs from the library more and more often, at first only classical, but later I experimented more and more with other genres of popular music. I was getting more and more into rock and metal, but the turning point came when I put on an Iron Maiden record. It was one of those “best of” albums, and I’ll never forget the feeling of pure satisfaction I got while listening. That was it. In heavy metal I found the grandeur and emotional charge I’d been looking for in classical all those years, plus the “drive” of the rhythm section and otherworldly vocals, which were exactly the things I’d missed in classical.
My musical taste hasn’t changed all that much to this day. After that, two more turning points happened in my life. At 23 I picked up a guitar for the first time (I’d never played an instrument before) and realized that performing and creating music was my life’s mission. For two years we were inseparable. I played up to eight hours a day, learning from my own mistakes and copying my favorite guitarists. The third turning point came at 29, when I actually sang on purpose for the first time. That was the year I co-founded SkyEye.
Today’s world is totally different for growing-up kids than it was for the generations before them. All the music you want is just a click away, whereas a few years ago it was a big project: where to find the record, where to dub it. That’s gone now. How do you experience this change?
Like I said, I got to know music by listening to Radio ARS and CDs from the library. All of that took a lot of time and dedication. Like catching my favorite music show, Nočni nokturno, at midnight — listening and recording epic masterpieces onto tapes instead of sleeping. (laughs) Those were the days. When listening to the music you loved took effort, sacrifice and time.
Today, thanks to how easy it is to get, music has definitely lost its value, especially for the younger generation. Why would you listen to a whole album by one band when you can skim through 20 different tracks by 20 different artists and save time, which we’re chronically short on these days?
I catch myself falling into that “play and skip mode” way too often, too. But despite the technological progress and easy access, I’m still a believer in listening to music with intention, and I set aside time for exactly that every day.
Does this hyper-availability make listeners tire of an artist faster and swap them for another? The record you hunted down feverishly 25 years ago and paid for with the last of your pocket money sits on your shelf like a protected monument. That’s gone now. Today you delete a “file” and download a new one. How did you find your way to listeners?
This hyper-availability does mean more listeners can hear a given piece of music or a band, which is definitely the upside of digitizing music content, but I think new music and music by unknown artists in particular have a much slimmer chance of the listener falling in love with it, because just one click away there’s already another option, another “sound,” another riff.
We in SkyEye are among those who made good use of digital and online platforms, and with them we introduced our music to the Slovenian metal community in a very short time. Thanks to digital media our music is also spreading successfully around the world, as shown by the fact that we sold most of the CD copies of Digital God abroad (due to high demand we’ll be doing a reprint). Of course, gigs on stages all over Slovenia also added their share to our visibility.
Is it true that a “true metalhead” doesn’t listen to any other music? That’s a common comment from “outside observers.” Do you dare mention a track from outside your home genre without being branded a heretic?
I love heavy metal, but I enjoy listening to all kinds of music. I’m actually a fan of music from the ’70s and ’80s, and of course classical. Take the fantastic band ToTo and a song like I won’t hold you back — if I dare mention it (laughs) — it’s often on my menu.
The new album Soldier of light comes out on June 25, 2021. How and when did it come together, and who was involved?
The idea for Soldiers of Light started taking shape even before the first album came out. Grega and I had a few polished ideas, which we then expanded and built on at rehearsals throughout 2019 until we were happy with the final results. We originally planned to record the album in the first third of 2020, but the epidemic wrecked our plans, along with the excessive, out-of-touch measures that came with it, so we only wrapped it up at the end of the year.
We left the production, mixing and recording to Grega Smola Crnkovič (the leader of the blues rock band Bad Notion), who’s also responsible for the sound of our first album. They say you don’t change a winning horse, so the decision to work with him again was easy, considering the great reviews we got when our debut came out. Besides, Grega has been part of the SkyEye story from the very beginning, we get along great and we’re growing together in more ways than one.
Many other people and friends also had a hand in the final product, and we’re immensely grateful to them. At the same time, we know a top-notch product is only possible with the support and efforts of the wider team that has successfully built up around the band over the years, and it gives us big hopes for continuing down the path we’ve set.
In October you signed with a foreign label, which is no small thing, especially in these unfavorable times… How did you pull that off, and what advantages does it bring to what you do?
The epidemic and the ban on playing live that came with it unexpectedly opened new doors and opportunities for us in the summer of 2020. As part of the multi-day online festival Europian metal festival alliance, we played as total outsiders alongside world-famous names and, completely out of the blue, drew a huge amount of interest, the most of anyone according to the organizers. As a result, we got offers from foreign labels. We went with the German label Reaper entertainment, which gave us the most realistic plan for working together and a guarantee that we wouldn’t be just one of many bands on their roster. It’s a young label closely tied to Nuclear Blast, one of the biggest metal labels, and operating under the Universal group umbrella (distribution). With the label, we want to break into the German market.
And what about your image — who takes care of that? The album cover, your website and your look are all very polished…
The crown on everything around the online concert was shaking hands with our new member, Boban Milunović (among other things known as the main organizer of Slovenia’s most successful festival, Metaldays), who became our manager and mastering engineer. With his knowledge and experience, Boban helped lift the band to a level beyond what the members themselves were doing and thinking. He and Grega are the main culprits behind the fantastic sound of the upcoming album, while Aleksandar Živanov took our visual identity to the next level with a legendary cover.
Gigs… we all miss them. What’s holding the band together at a time when we’ve been facing restrictions for more than a year? What kept you “alive” as a band? How did you keep up the drive to create new material?
I’m really lucky to be in a band where we all enjoy each other’s company and are real friends. Music and making it is what binds us most, but even just hanging out over a beer with no instruments in our hands helps each of us chase away everyday problems. That’s how we’re wading through this corona crisis, relaxed but hard-working. Mixing business with pleasure, or however the saying goes. (laughs) We actually spent a big part of 2020 recording and finishing Soldiers of Light, and with the new material we’re already deep into a third album.
The unfavorable times we live in can bring musical peaks. On one hand, artists are full of frustration, but on the other, they have more time to create and devote to the projects they want. Behind it all there’s also the question of funding. How’s that going?
Like I said, through a string of unbelievable coincidences the epidemic brought us a deal with a German label, a manager and a new graphic designer (painter). You could hardly ask for more. (laughs)
Otherwise, the funding plan stays the same even in these hard times: the band runs on the members’ own money and financial help from fans in the form of “merch” sales.
A gig isn’t just the band. There are always the promoters, stagehands, lighting techs, sound engineers, security, the bar… The list is long. The music itself will survive because it’s eternal. How will all of those people survive?
There’s not much to debate here. If the measures to contain the epidemic keep making it impossible to put on gigs profitably in the future, the sector that makes events happen will collapse for good. What happens then, I don’t know. The situation is already catastrophic. So let’s back the people who are trying to save the events sector from going under by setting up charity campaigns and funds, like the #mi delamo dogodke campaign or the Metaldays crew fundraiser, and with a small donation or by buying a t-shirt, let’s chip in to help preserve it and get through this crisis.
How do you win over today’s teenagers with your music, when on one side they’re bombarded by huge bands that can afford spectacles for tens of thousands, and on the other there’s a band playing in some small club, hauling and setting up all their gear themselves and being far more honest and genuine in their message? How does a listener choose between spectacle and sincerity?
I don’t have a recipe for getting young people to listen to our music, and I don’t really worry about it. I believe quality music with top-notch execution eventually finds the right listener. Our story proves it, too: in six years, without fretting over this kind of question or any elaborate marketing, we managed to get a fan from the other side of the world to email us saying he wants our CD. If someone had told me years ago that would happen, I’d have laughed in their face.
SkyEye will keep going with an honest desire to make the music we love. That core, that driving force, won’t change. What does change are the other stakeholders, the influences on the band and how long-term decisions get made, because more and more people are involved in what we do (manager, label, booking agents, producer…). That’s a normal process once a band starts growing beyond the time and organizational capacity of its own members.
We’re at a turning point right now, but we don’t think about it too much, because just like at the start of our journey we’re focused on making quality music that will make every metalhead happy and meet the highest heavy metal standards.
A bit more provocation to finish: do you dare claim metal will still be alive in a couple of decades? Will metal survive, or sink into the swamp of instant music and performers?
Metal will survive, and I honestly think it’ll become even stronger, because in a flood of plastic instant music and the lifestyle that goes with it, people will long for that primal thing, that feeling of being alive and, most importantly, a sense of belonging. The awareness that you’re not alone in this individualistic world, but that you belong to a huge family. The metal family.
Author: Silvija Makovec
Edited by: Nataša Fajon
Additional concert photo gallery: Sebastijan Videc
You can check out the full photo gallery in the RockLine review of SkyEye’s gig on May 2, 2019, when the band opened the night at CUK Kino Šiška for Iron Maidens, an all-female tribute to Iron Maiden.
You can also read this interview on the web portal Opazovalec.si!
