- Well, exactly 6 persons who once were members of band are not around anymore - Alexander Guljaev (guitar), Anastasija Ivanova (violin), Andrey Zimenkov (bass), Alexey Koscheev (guitar) and the most recent - Andrey Konstantinov (keyboards) and myself, Evgeny Trefilov (drums). All of the persons mentioned had to left the band for different reasons... some decided to leave for themselves and some were fired because of musical or personal problems. Nowadays band is still led by leader Dmitry Grigoriev who is main songwriter, vocalist and guitarist of ORA PRO NOBIS, along with skilled bass-player Maxim Kuznetsov, who once were even a member of DEMARCH band. New drummer is old friend of Dmitry, Ilya Safronov, and he played with Dima before ORA PRO NOBIS in thrash project MOR. Also there is new guitarist but I still don't know anything about him. I can't think about this line-up as something permanent, because everything changes... I never thought I'll leave this band, it was my first band and I played in it since 1994 - 5 years is a long time. But it happens sometimes you become interested in different styles and different approaches than the ones band implements.

- Well, this album was very hard for us. We needed about 2-3 months to compose each song and even after that we made significant changes to all the material. Different riffs travelled among some songs, and I think if we never started recording the album we'd change it eternally. Basically, we didn't like the material as much as 'Dedication' album, it was like a contrast between our musical and technical possibilities and our wishes, you know... For instance, I wanted this album to be more progressive, in the vein of Fates Warning or Dream Theater, not at all of course but in some elements. I think we achieved some of our goals, our sound became really sympho-metallic, saturated with a lot of keyboards, powerful bass and sometimes tricky parts and measures. The last song we wrote not so long before recording session was 'Death', 18 minutes track. It was an idea to write a long song in which we would express everybody's ideas, but it turned to be something different in the end, because of problems inside the band and inside each member... I'd dare to say we become maybe a kind of lazy... or just stopped believing in yourself as musicians, so the most recent trends were to simplify some of our experimental ideas. Being not professionals, I think we achieved good heights and maybe new line-up will continue evolutioning in this space. As for influences, Dima is great fan of LAKE OF TEARS band, he likes vocals and guitar work... Andrey was more into alternative and maybe even dancing music, though he listens to a lot of heavy and even ambient music. I prefer progressive rock from 70 to 90, also hard rock classic, gothic and doom bands. Maxim is glam rock lover, but we didn't let him express his POISON-influenced ideas on the album (metal cowboys brrrr), hehe.

- Sorry, can't say nothing, I don't write lyrics and I think we shall put this question out ok?

- Well, no. We understand all the difficulties of making business with metal music in Russia, we thank Agen Price for making Dedication available on the market, but we wanted to be under some foreign label and after 4 refuses I understood that our band still never achieves western industry standards. After some efforts I realized that the band ORA PRO NOBIS should remain ORA PRO NOBIS... but that means that we won't get a deal in near future. And after all, I didn't like the trend to become a russian-rock band and write songs that will remind CHAIF or CHIZH...

- Well, which album? Dedication was selling good, we have sold about 400 copies I think and I don't know how much METAL AGEN sold. As for new album, it is still unreleased... Few labels didn't like vocals, few said we all have to significantly improve our performing and songwriting capabilities and the last refuse from BESTIAL RECORDS Romania was because our music was too soft for this extreme label, although its chief Adrian admitted that music is recorded and played very good.

- Well we did a lot of shows in past but last year it was hard to play a lot, because most of the clubs closed. Simply there are only 2 stages - POLIGON and JAM clubs, as for POLIGON, they have strong restrictions and JAM simply sux. We never cared about with which bands we'll play, because always thought we are the best :). To be seriously, we liked to play with alternative bands - grunge and hardcore - because there is always much more audience on alternative gigs and this audience is much better than metal fans. They always listened to our songs carefully and supported us. On stage we tried to make a kind of show, well not with pyrotechnic, but simply headbanging and moving, feeling on stage freely, and Dima likes to chat with audience, sing with them and so on... We wear white shirts and black jeans and loose our long hair... well look at the photos :).

- Oh yes, at first our name was MOR, but we decided to change it after a half of year simply because it was kinda death-metal name but we were already playing doom metal. So we began brain storm and Dima said he wanted something in latin, because we loved first My Dying Bride single so, and there were some tracks in latin, we found it very unusual. And so Dima simply remembered all the words he knew (per aspera ad astra (ad anus:) ) and so on... ORA PRO NOBIS came up not directly from Ave Maria, but through Goffman's tale 'Satan's elixir'. We thought a bit about it and everyone of us liked it so it become a name. Like we were saying during next year, 'You shall pray for us 'cos you can do nothing for people like us, only pray'. You can find your own meaning of course, like in ROCK FUZZ magazine review one humoristic guy mentioned that he can forgive Paradise Lost for being here, can forgive Ozzy Osbourne for STILL being here, but as for ORA PRO NOBIS, you can only pray, amen... and so on.

- Ha Ha :) No I am not married. Dima is married for 3 years already and Max plans to marry soon as I know. As for my own interests, I love listening to music, playing it, I really love learning playing drums, I do it for 6 years already and have second teacher now, very accomplished funk/jazz drummer. Also my interests include computer/internet things... well not too much really, because main interests are inside music since my childhood, though I never ever been to musical school 'till 20... Of course I love companies, drinking - these things I think we all share :).

- Ah no, I don't know much about zines except one called Sotsirh Susii - kinda 'samizdat'. A lot of bands, but most of them suck and only bands who have established themself through 5-6 years are really interested for me at least. And I don't know any label who really supports underground bands.

- You know, I was away from Saint-Petersburg on these days, me and Andrey were in Finland/Sweden on tour. So I can't say a lot, but as I know, people love Impaled Nazarene here from late 80's and never even hoped seeing them live, so close. Children Of Bodom gained a lot of credits here for their strongest musicianship, even Kostya from PAINFUL MEMORIES after seeing their soundcheck said he thinks about leaving the music 'cos he will never play like Alex Laiho. The bad point was that Impaled Nazarene were the last band and a half of people left club, fearing not to be home this day. But Impaled made really crazy show, Mikka wrote 'Fuck me' on his belly, even made some exhibitionist acts on stage and so on... you know they all were so drunk :).

- As I know, guys now simpy rehearse the old songs but as the new material will be written, I'll put information and samples on our webpage.

- My dream... I want to be in really cool and famous band, play around the world, making albums, cd's... and I want to be as good as Mike Portnoy in drumming. Also to have a girl like errr.... Sharon Stone hehe or like that..... why am I worse than this motley crue sucker? :)