Im Interview mit Hei'An

Hallo Matic von Hei’An, vielen Dank für die Zeit für das Interview.

Festivalstalker: Wie kam der Name „Hei’An“ zustande und was bedeutet er euch persönlich?

Matic: The name “Hei’An”, although we stylized the spelling a tiny bit, comes directly from the Chinese language and can be translated in a few subtly different ways, but essentially, it means “peaceful / ominous darkness”. Aljaž, our harsh vocalist, actually came up with it, and that was long before he was involved with the band itself in any capacity. I remember having the concept down for our first record, a lot of the songs already written etc., and one thing I really struggled with was to come up with a name for the band. I knew I wanted it to be really unique and distinct, kind of catchy in the sense that it’d “stay in your ear” after hearing it, and I really wanted it to have a deeper and fitting meaning in the context of our music. We were bounding ideas back and forth, and Aljaž kind of helped me brainstorm at that stage, and he speaks Chinese because he studied synology, so a lot of his suggestions were derived from the Chinese language, and the same instant he suggested “Hei’An”, it immediately clicked for me in all of the aspects I described above, so I went with it pretty much straight away. Our music, after all, IS kinda dark and ominous, yet hopeful / peaceful at the same time, so the name ties into the whole idea behind the band super well.

Festivalstalker: Wie erlebt ihr die Metal-Szene in Slowenien — und welche Unterschiede seht ihr, wenn ihr in anderen Ländern spielt bzw. gerade hier in Deutschland?

Matic: The metal scene in Slovenia, while very small, is incredibly vibrant, diverse and “alive”. We have a bunch of local metal bands, a bunch of local venues (from super small to super big ones) where a whole lot of metal(-adjacent) gigs by both local AND foreign, big AND small artists happen all year round. So I’d say the scene is really “healthy” and we are forever grateful to be based out of an area where that is the case. The main difference I’d say is – and that goes only for some countries, NOT “every other country that isn’t Slovenia” haha – that the scene here is at least generally more oriented towards more traditional and / or more extreme metal acts, whereas more “-core oriented” / “poppy” metal artists like we are, are generally a bit less listened-to over here, which is not the case for a lot of other areas, including Germany. But we are generally happy about our local scene here and the support we’ve received from it so far, and we’re also happy to be able to explore other scenes, I feel like we have at least something to offer to each “local scene” out there and are eager to do more and more and more gigs all over.

Festivalstalker: Euer Genre verbindet Elemente aus Metal-, Rock-, Pop- und Elektro-Stilen. Wie läuft der kreative Prozess ab — wer bringt welche Ideen mit?

Matic: I start writing each and every song myself (except for maybe an exception or two here and there, so far), and generally I also come up with an almost fully fleshed-out vision of where Iwant each song to go before even really sharing it with the other band members. So each of the influences that you mentioned actually at least “starts” in my own head. Then, once I come up with a “good enough demo” to show it to the other boys, we all dive into a demo together and every member brings in their own ideas, especially for their own specific parts, that sort of amplify this “genre fusion” in a lot of ways, as we all come from very different musical backgrounds, but luckily all agree 100% of the time of the direction Hei’An is “supposed to” take with the “next song”. Of course, a big thing that shapes the finally released songs is the production, so the specific producers etc. involved. So in a lot of ways, each song is very much a collaborative effort, but it’s always all according to the vision that I myself come up with in the earliest stages of writing a demo song.

Festivalstalker: Euer neues Album ‘‘Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye‘‘ erscheint am 25.09.2025. Was ist die Botschaft des Albums, wen soll es erreichen?

Matic: The album, while not a concept album per se, does have a very unified and consistent message all throughout. It tackles three main themes, one being my sexuality (as I publicly came out as bisexual a while ago, and I explored different issues that came from that, both in the context of society and in the context of some people and even family members that used to be close to me before this), the other main theme is my MS and depression (as I was diagnosed with MS right around the time “imago” was released and of course that time of uncertainty and confusion led to physical AND severe psychological issues, depressive episodes etc. – I’m good now, though, the disease is in remission at the time of writing!), and the final and most introspective one was a reflection of our decaying society (as I feel like a lot of sociopolitical progress is being rapidly undone lately, since we are seeing more and more bigotry, racism, xenophobia, homophobia and all-around baseless hate in all aspects of society on the rise lately, and I sort of addressed that as well). So in that way, each song on the record kind of tackles a “ghost” (past trauma, whether my own or in a slightly broader sense) that I wanted to “kiss goodbye” (work through and leave behind in a cathartic way through writing and creating this album). So I’m hoping that listeners will be able to use this album to maybe relate to that and help themselves work through their own stuff, and “kiss their own ghosts goodbye”, and I’m hoping this album will help at least a few people the same way making it helped me. This is pretty much the main message, and who it’s mostly directed towards.

Festivalstalker: Wie unterscheidet sich ‘‘Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye‘‘ vom Debüt-Album ‘‘Imago‘‘?

Matic: In so many ways. Although it’s a very logical evolution from “imago” and thus keeps everything that “makes Hei’An Hei’An” (and that “imago” established) intact to a very high degree, it evolves it and brings it several steps forward. It’s a much “better-produced” album, it’s a much bolder album in terms of fusing different genre / style elements together, in a lot of ways it’s a much poppier album, but in a looooot of ways it’s also a substantially heavier album, and it’s much more direct in what it talks about lyrically. So yeah, I’d say it’s a very natural, yet pretty drastic evolution of all the core foundation we established with the first record.

Festivalstalker: Produziert wurde ‘‘Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye‘‘ von Randy Slaugh (bekannt durch Architects und The Amity Affliction) – Welcher Einfluss bringt Randy dadurch mit?

Matic: Yes! Well, co-produced! We co-produced the album ourselves, meaning we took on the role of producers (for the first time ever so far!) when it comes to all the band / live instrumentation elements of things, and also did a big chunk of the electronic production ourselves as well. What Randy brought to the table with his co-production, which we did remotely, is that he sort of guided us and offered a lot of ideas and input on how to take the exact same ideas and vision we already had (he didn’t “force us to change anything” or anything like that), but how to try and make them even more convincing, flow even better, and generally sound and work even better. Then, when the album was recorded and we had a big chunk of the electronic production already done as well, he took everything and refined it with additional electronic production and general polish that made the album sound the way it sounds today. So it was very much a collaborative effort between us and him, and he just understood our vision super well, and used his “magic” to bring it to life in an even more convincing and “polished” way, but without “changing the core of it”, if that makes sense. We truly loved working with him, as he’s an insanely talented and accomplished guy, but also the kindest and sweetest human being!

Festivalstalker: Arbeitet ihr eher nach einem festen Schema (z. B. erst Instrumentals, dann Gesang) oder entwickelt sich ein Song organisch im Proberaum/Studio?

Matic: No, nothing like that. The whole process for our first record was very different from how we tackled things for this new album, and even with some little demo ideas for future releases that we are writing right now, we are already switching things up a tiny bit, so I wouldn’t say Hei’An has any kind of “supersuper fixed scheme of how we do things”. But most of “Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye”, the writing process was pretty much like this: I started each demo idea by just playing around in my DAW with various synth sounds, samples, beats, interesting leads, interesting chord progressions and melodies etc., and making little loops out of those ideas. Once I landed on something that “felt right”, I started expanding on it, adding some live instrumentation, then I shared it with the boys and they all had their own input (some “remote”, some by sitting next to me in my bedroom “studio”, some in the actual rehearsal space), and we slowly sculpted each song to its completion, in terms of instrumentals. Then, I added the vocal melodies and lyrics. Of course, some magic did happen in the studio as well, some magic happened during the production process, a lot of little things were altered retroactively to make everything work together, but yeah, this is pretty much the outline of how the process looked like. But as I said, “imago” was written with an EXTREMELY different workflow, and we are now writing some little ideas for the future in a few kind of different ways as well, so that’s why I said that we don’t really have a “fixed process / scheme”. We just go with the flow and with what feels right to us in each given moment.

Festivalstalker: Wenn eure Musik ein Gefühl oder einen „Zustand“ ausdrücken sollte – welcher wäre das?

Matic: Just ONE feeling or “state”? That’s a tough one because there’s quite an array of emotions, feelings and states that we’ve explored with our music so far. If I had to summarize it with just ONE feeling or “state”… I’d say it’s “spleen”, but not the organ, I mean in a romantic sense – a feeling of deep melancholy or overall dissatisfaction often tinged with a kind of existential sadness, BUT in our case with a silver lining and still a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel. 🙂

Festivalstalker: Auf was können die Fans sich mit ‘‘Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye‘‘ gefasst machen, noch mehr Videos, kleine Specials etc?

Matic: I don’t think we’ll do any more music videos, special features or anything like that for this specific album outside of what we’ve released so far, but we are working on some really cool things – our 2-day “Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye” Release Festival that’s fast-approaching, a bunch of shows for 2026 and beyond (can’t announce anything yet, but a LOT of stuff is in the works and hopefully ends up happening to the biggest extent we can make it to at this given time), we have a “remix EP” idea that we’re floating around and are now starting to actively work on (as a lot of the songs on “Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye” are very “remixable” in our opinion), and we are already writing some new material, so I think I can say that we’ll be releasing new music WAY sooner than anybody might expect – not just yet though, for now, let’s focus on “Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye” and everything that comes directly associated with it. 🙂