Em Português aqui

In the realm of contemporary music, few albums manage to combine polished production with such raw, intense  emotional vulnerability as Hei’An’s latest work, Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye. On this record, Matic Blagonič dives deep into personal and social themes — from his battle with multiple sclerosis to his experience as a bisexual person, as well as powerful reflections on today’s world. In a revealing interview, he shares the behind-the-scenes of the album’s creation, the emotional challenges behind specific tracks, and the artistic boldness that led to a significant sonic evolution. Get ready for an honest conversation about overcoming struggles, authenticity, and the transformative power of music.

By Sandra Pinto

“Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye” feels intensely personal. What was the emotional or mental turning point that pushed you toward such raw vulnerability in your writing?
After “imago”, which was already a deeply personal record, I really wanted to push myself as a songwriter and write “better songs”. We tried to push that in the instrumental, arrangement and production departments as well, but since the raw vulnerability element came more directly from the lyrics and vocal melodies (and vocal deliveries as well), let’s focus on that here. I remember seeing an interview with Rick Rubin from some sessions he did with Imagine Dragons a few years ago, and I remember him talking about how important it is to
try and ensure the listeners will understand the meaning of the song in a more straightforward way, so although it’s cool to have lyrics that are poetic and full of metaphors and whatnot, it’s still good to make sure at least the “key points” that you want to share with the listener are a bit more straightforward – not necessarily “too simple” to the point of them ending up being “corny”, but more straightforward and clear in their meaning nevertheless.
So although my writing style is still inherently pretty poetic and metaphorical, I really tried to follow what Rick Rubin said there to a degree. One big thing here was also the fact that I really tried to look more “outward” with this album, both in the sense that there are songs that
tackle themes “outside of just myself / my own mind” (as opposed to the themes tackled on “imago” for instance), and generally make the album a bit less introspective – although it still is VERY introspective in so many ways, I feel like I’ve managed to make it much more
“outward-leaning” anyway, especially because it talks directly to the listener in so many moments on the record. So that would for sure be something that helped with the album’s relatability and made it even more raw and vulnerable in so many ways, because I really dared to put my heart on my sleeve with this one. And of course, a big part which inherently called for a quite deep level of raw emotion being felt all throughout the album, were the specific themes that were tackled. When I first started writing the lyrics for this album, I really
wanted to let go of an “overlaying concept umbrella from the get go” (which used to be the modus operandi with “imago”), but rather write each song to have its own purpose and own message. Ironically, I ended up writing about kind of similar themes and having a very clear
common thread all throughout the album, which then shaped the album’s “concept” (although I still don’t view the album as a “concept album” per se, but it is undeniable that it almost kind of could have been, or in a way, maybe it even kind of is). The main themes that “naturally came out of me” with this album’s lyrics were my sexuality, and more specifically the challenges I’ve been facing because of it (I openly came out as bisexual a while ago which caused some great issues and incidents every now and then both with the society we live in
and even with some people and family members that used to be very close to me), then the next main theme is my MS which I was diagnosed with after “imago” had already been released, and caused major health problems and subsequent issues with much more severe
depressive episodes and feelings of hopelessness than probably ever before (luckily, my meds are working, my disease is in remission, and I’m doing super well, but there were still periods of uncertainty and times when it wasn’t “so good”, which led me to write some of the
songs), and the final theme is me looking at society, the world we live in, and tying it all together by thinking about how society lately seems to be rapidly undoing a lot of progress that’s been made before (I mean, there is more and more bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia,
racism, and all-around baseless hate present in all aspects of society right now) which is really scary to me, it doesn’t seem like a world I truly want to live in, yet I acknowledge that it’s all our collective fault as humans, due to the “human condition”. So in the end, the album
ended up “naturally” tackling some themes that are very important to me and very personal to me, and if we tie that into the fact that we just “wanted to write better songs”, thus making the arrangements, melodies, performances etc. reflect the lyrics of each song arguably better
than ever before, it made for a very personal, raw and vulnerable album, behind the “mask” of polished production, and we’re very proud we managed to bring our vision to life like this.
So yeah, I wouldn’t say there was any kind of “real emotional or mental turning point” that led to this, but it was a combination of all of these things that I just described.

You’ve said that each song addresses a ‘ghost’ from your past. Was there one track that was particularly difficult — or therapeutic — to write and record?
Yes, each song kind of represents a “ghost” I wanted to “kiss goodbye”, thus, the album title. It was really important for me to capture each emotion I wanted to convey in the best way I personally could, so each song had moments where it was “hard” to get it just right, and that
goes for the songwriting process, arranging process, recording process, production process, it’s something I really had in mind all throughout. But yeah, one song that really instantly came to mind when you asked about any of them being a particular challenge, is probably “Dearest”. The instrumental was actually done really fast – which is pretty ironic, considering the fact it’s definitely the most instrumentally and structurally complex song on the record, and the “proggiest” one as well – but getting the lyrics and the vocal melodies down in the
writing stage, and then doing it justice with the vocal performance in the studio, was quite a challenge to be honest. “Dearest” is definitely the most heartbreaking track on the record, and I really wanted it to truly FEEL heartbreaking. It’s basically me talking directly to my
partner (“my dearest”) and telling him how afraid I am of my MS, and how scared I am that it might some day all go to hell, and the meds might stop working, and that he’ll have to possibly see and go through all of that, which is something he does not deserve, and how unfair it all is.. As I’ve said numerous times before, I’m handling my MS like a boss and truly kicking its ass and fighting it super well, which I’m immensely thankful for, as I’m pretty lucky that it’s going as well as it’s going.. But when I was writing this song, I was still terrified of my
diagnosis, and my mind was spiraling in so many dark thoughts and places. So that’s sort of where the lyrics and melodies for the song came from. And because it’s such a heartbreaking one, it truly was a challenge to write it and an even bigger challenge to record it, and I still get at least misty-eyed (or sometimes I even straight up cry) every single time I sing it, every single time we rehearse it together, and it’ll no doubt be happening live as well. But as weird as that is, it also makes it that much more therapeutic and cathartic. I feel “a tiny bit lighter” every single time I sing it in full.

Musically, this album expands your sound while keeping your core identity. What were some of the sonic risks or experiments that paid off the most for you?
I mean, what “has or hasn’t paid off” is quite a complex question honestly, because there are so many ways I could go about answering this.. But I’d like to focus on the “artistic payoff”, so “what felt like was truly worth taking a leap of faith with in an artistic sense”. With this album,
we all really wanted to expand our sonic horizons. We didn’t want to “just write another ‘imago’”, because that would have put us in sort of a “creative box” which would probably have been “hard to escape from”, because we’d also be sending a message to the audience that “ok, this is what you can expect from Hei’An, and that’s pretty much it”. But we did NOT want that. We are all HUGE fans of when bands manage to keep their core identity very much alive, yet have every release be a drastic evolution, expansion and exploration of what the very limits of their sound could be. Really good and really high profile examples of this would be bands like Linkin Park and Bring Me The Horizon, but of course there are also numerous others who do that. So that’s what we wanted to do as well – to evolve our sound in a fairly drastic manner, but make it still sound undoubtedly and uniquely Hei’An. And we decided we wanted to let go of all “mental blocks / walls” in regards to “how Hei’An should sound” or even just “how a metal album should sound”, but just write whatever we like without being afraid to experiment. There were songs that started off with an old-school drum&bass beat that sounded NOTHING “like Hei’An”, or with poppy synth loops that were
more reminiscent of a Tate McRae thing than Hei’An, or sometimes even with super heavy breakdown thingies that also at first sounded more like Humanity’s Last Breath than Hei’An, etcetc. But throughout the process of writing each song, and then tying them together sonically so that they all fit on one album, we managed to make them all sound very much uniquely Hei’An, while keeping all of those super diverse influences present-enough so that the final product ended up being something that truly excites us. So I feel like “not worrying what anybody else will think but just writing songs that we truly LOVE” was, even if it sounds pretty simple, the biggest mental obstacle we had to truly let go off, and the biggest risk we truly took, and it ended up being the biggest artistic payoff in this whole story, at least for us.

The album’s themes range from chronic illness to sexuality to geopolitical anxiety. Was it challenging to weave all of that into a cohesive musical narrative?
Weirdly, not really! As I said, at first, we were really writing each song “on its own” without really thinking about how it would later tie into the narrative of a full album, but because the songs were all written (or at least put together / fully realized / finished) in a fairly short
time-span, they all ended up tying together really well both lyrically and sonically kind of “on their own”. Of course, there were some slight tweaks that we did here and there to make the album truly sound and feel like “one album” and not “just a collage of songs”, but yeah. It
was surprisingly not really all that challenging per se, it just came naturally for the most part.

“Liberated” blends electronic pop and post-metal in a bold way. What inspired that genre fusion, and how did you make it still feel like a Hei’An song?
Well, “Liberated” was actually one of the first songs that was finished for this record, and as such, it’s still influenced in a lot of ways by the post-metal-prevalent sound we had going on with our first album. The genre fusion thing also came naturally – we knew we wanted the
next release to sound much more electronic, poppy and “well-produced” than the first one, so going with a poppier approach came directly from that idea. A big thing that’s present all throughout Hei’An’s sound is the fact that we often tend to sound quite cinematic in terms of
how the songs are arranged and produced, and we wanted to go with a cinematic feel for “Liberated” as well, but with a very clear element of pop sensibility and production, that would sort of “bridge” our “imago” sound and our “Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye” sound in a way. And
“what exactly made it feel like a Hei’An song” is a really tough question to answer because it really does come naturally at some point. I guess we just have a bit of a distinct way of putting things together, and I have a bit of a distinct way of writing melodies and chord progressions, so the “Hei’An-ness” of the track truly did come completely “on its own”.

You’ve called “Liberated” one of the most positive songs on the album. Was it important for you to include a track that offers hope or catharsis in the midst of darker material?
Yes. I feel like while most of our music is inspired by fairly dark themes, thoughts and emotions, it’s important for me to still be able to find a sort of a “silver lining” in the midst of it all, so that we don’t just “whine about our trauma” so to speak (nothing wrong with that, though!), but try to share some hope and “a light at the end of the tunnel” as well. We tried to do it with “imago”, and in some ways, we tried to do it with this record as well. So yes, it was pretty important to have some positivity on the record, too.

The music video for “Liberated” is described as cinematic. Can you share some of the concept behind it and how it connects with the message of the song?
Yes, it’s definitely the most cinematic music video we’ve done so far if we’re talking purely in terms of “how cinematic it is” – there are no band / performance elements, just pure narrative and visuals. The concept, that connects directly to the message of the song, is of this character that finds himself in a strange but seemingly beautiful world, searches for something, encounters these beautiful and mysterious otherworldly figures that sort of guide him on a journey that ends up warping this world he found himself in and making it more and more bizarre, weird, and dark, and by the end of it, the figures end up taking his life, but giving him a sense of peace and liberation in doing so. In a lot of ways, it represents me going through different phases of my life, especially those riddled with traumatic experiences, a lot of which we’ve mentioned in this interview before, so I won’t repeat myself, but yeah, in the end what it took for me to feel “like myself again”, was “killing my past self” and growing from it in a lot of ways, which is kind of what the music video represents. “Liberated” as a song essentially describes how music is always what ultimately “saves” me, and how cathartic and liberating the experience of working through past trauma by writing music really
feels for me, and we wanted for the music video to kind of visually represent this, in a visually aesthetic and cinematic way.

This album was produced with industry giants like Randy Slaugh, Joseph McQueen, Zakk Cervini, and Ted Jensen. What did each bring to the table — and how did those collaborations shape the final sound?
So, we fully wrote and arranged everything ourselves, and we were our own producers when it came to the band / live instrumentation aspect of things, and we also did a big chunk of the electronic production. Randy, a long-time friend of ours, co-produced the record remotely, but
he never interfered with our vision or really “changed” much, he just gave us a lot of extremely valuable notes, thoughts and opinions on a lot of what we did, and then ended up adding a BUNCH of electronic production elements to it, and through a very fun remote “back and forth” process, we together shaped the album into what it sounds like today. So it was a very collaborative process working with Randy, and he’s definitely a big part of this album’s sound, although he just helped us “bring our vision to the next level” instead of “changing our vision”, which we are very thankful for. We love working with the guy, he’s such a talented and accomplished producer, but also the sweetest and kindest human being.
Then, after the record was edited (shoutout to Kevin McCombs and Sam Bassani who absolutely nailed it in that department!), it went into mixing, so what Joseph and Zakk did was much more straightforward, as they weren’t directly involved in the production process, but rather just did the “technical” mixing aspect of things. I’m not trying to downplay it in any way, though, because those guys truly are some of the best in the world at what they do, at least definitely for this particular style of music, so working with them and having our record mixed in a way reminiscent of some of our biggest inspirations and idols was a pretty humbling thing to have happened, and the same goes for Ted’s mastering (he truly is a legend for a reason). So yeah, I’d say we definitely did absolutely all of the ground work ourselves, but working with all of these guys truly helped us bring our vision to life EXACTLY the way were dreaming of, so we are forever thankful for the opportunity to have worked with each and every one of them, and are immensely thankful for their contributions to how this album ended up sounding – pretty much exactly as we “heard it in our heads” from the start (smile).

Was there a specific moment during the production process — maybe in the studio — when you realized you were creating something truly different from your debut?
I don’t think there was any kind of “specific moment”. The intention of making the next release sound vastly different from our debut, yet keeping “the unique Hei’An core sound” very much present, was present from the earliest stages of songwriting, so we knew the whole thing would sound quite a bit different from the very earliest writing / demo stages already. This time around, we also really tried our best to create “fully fleshed-out demos” BEFORE actually hitting the studio, so by the time we did go in the studio to record this, we already knew exactly how the whole thing is supposed to sound at the end. Of course, a bunch of little ideas happened on the spot while recording (the “magic of being closed in a studio together for a period of time”, if you will, that I feel like happens to every artist when they go through that process), but the sound itself was super clear in our (and our producers’) minds by that point for sure. So yeah, no real “specific moment”, but more like
an intentional generally different workflow and direction.

You’re organizing a two-night release festival in Ljubljana. How important is it to celebrate this album on your home turf, and what can fans expect from those shows?
Yes! I mean, the more “modern metalcore / poppy metal” scene that we really dove into with this album, is not super big in Slovenia – although we DO have a bunch of people who listen to this style of music, and some artists who do it, most notably Within Destruction – so our
goals in terms of where to perform live this album cycle remained similar to the last album cycle. Meaning, it’s clear already (without announcing anything, but we do have a bunch of stuff in the works for 2026) that we’ll have way more shows abroad than in Slovenia for this
album cycle as well, and because of that, it feels like a very special moment to START the cycle here at home. It’s our attempt at trying to contribute to the local scene here, because even though it’s not super big, it is extremely supportive, lively and warm, and we feel like we almost owe it to our local fans to hold the release gigs for this on home ground, because they’ve been incredibly supportive in all our endeavours so far. In terms of what people can expect from these shows.
We have 2 days, 2 different openers per day, a custom Hei’An beer, a food truck, a Hei’An DJ set after party, so a lot going on. We will of course headline both days, and for Day 1, we’ll play the new album “Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye” in its entirety, with a special encore as well. For Day 2, however, we have a very special set ready, that still highlights “Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye”, so we’ll still be be performing all of the songs from the new album, but not in order, as we have a bunch of songs from “imago” thrown into the mix but with slightly updated arrangements so that they tie into the “Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye” era better, and some other surprise performative elements thrown into the mix. To anybody that comes to see this, it’ll be an emotional 2 days of celebrating this new release in the best way we know, so to speak. There will also be no “band-only areas” (except for the backstage itself), so we’ll be hanging out with everybody a lot, and especially at the Hei’An DJ set afterparty, we’ll also take turns in partying WITH the fans and talking to everybody as well (without being “closed off at our booth and that’s it”), so anybody that wants to connect with us personally will have the chance to do that as well. INCREDIBLY excited for this!

You’ve toured extensively and played major festivals like MetalDays and 70000 Tons of Metal. How has that experience influenced your writing or performance style?
I mean, I wouldn’t exactly say we “toured extensively” as we still have so many “touring goals” we want to be able to hit in the (near) future, but yes, we are thankful and lucky to be able to say that we have had numerous shows and performed in quite a few countries, plus a few pretty major festivals, during our debut album live cycle already, which is something we’ll forever cherish and be thankful for, and we are hoping we’ll only continue and “expand” this wave with the imminent “Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye” live cycle, for which many more shows
for 2026 and beyond will be announced soon. In terms of writing style, one thing that did influence it a bit and came from the shows themselves, is the fact that we noticed that at least in a live setting, audiences tend to vibe more with groovier parts and really go wild on
heavier parts, so we intentionally wanted to weave more groovy stuff and substantially heavier stuff into our new album, unlike what we were going for with the first one. So if people enjoyed our album 1 songs live, we are hoping they should enjoy this new album live that much more. Based on the rehearsals alone, these songs are even more “fun to play” live for us as a band, so it should be a lot of fun performing them live soon, we truly can’t wait. In terms of the performative aspect itself.. We did go and analyze what we did with the “imago”
shows and what seemed to work, “feel right”, what the audiences seemed to respond to the best, how we looked like on stage, how we “behaved” on stage and moved around on stage, how we sounded in terms of live production etcetc. And stemming directly from that self-reflection and self-analysis based on each and every show experience during the “imago” live cycle, including absolutely everything you mentioned here, we did “upgrade” our live performance A LOT. We now have a touring guitarist, so I’ll be “relieved of guitar duties”
for live shows from now on, which grants me so much more freedom in how I deliver the vocal performance and especially interact with the audience. We worked very closely with our new FOH engineer to truly make our live sound even “better-produced” and sound even
closer to the studio versions of the song, while still very much keeping the “live energy” aspect of things more alive than ever. We’ve upgraded our band image by coming up with stage outfits for this era that you can already see in some of our photos and music videos for this album cycle. We rehearsed how we “move” on stage (without it being “choreographed” at all!) so that we deliver the whole performance, even in a more theatrical sense, in a much more organized and hopefully hard-hitting and aesthetically pleasing manner than before. So a lot of things, truly a loooot of things. We always try to learn from the past and keep improving as much as we possibly can, so we really did our best to try and grow in that aspect of things as well. Can’t wait for audiences to see it so that we can hopefully keep learning and keep growing even more.

Your debut, Imago, set a strong foundation. In what ways do you think Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye redefines what Hei’An stands for as a band?
Weirdly enough, even though it’s a very different album, “Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye” really just evolves and continues everything that “imago” set a foundation for, and takes it a bunch of steps further. So one of the main things that “make Hei’An Hei’An”, and that really captures what the band kind of stands for in a lot of ways, is the fact that we like to create music that is dark and deeply emotional, cinematic in narrative, introspective at heart but relatable and outward-looking nevertheless, and fun for us to make, perform and listen back to. So I’d say this new album hasn’t really “redefined” much, it more so simply added to what we already had going on and evolved it massively so that we can grow as artists, and so that our audiences can “grow with us” if that makes sense. But the “core of Hei’An” is still very much the same as it always was, just “clearer” and better-defined than ever before I guess.