#Interview with Andi Kravljaca from Kindred North (Sweden / Norway)

Interview conducted by Elyna Steel

“Kindred North; Reclaiming the Truly Human Connection From the 80’s—in 2026.”

By Elyna Steel

Welcome to a new interview session on Blessed Altar Zine.

It’s been a long ride of silence on my part, but I am finally back on the road, stepping onto stage with a warm conversation with Andi Kravjlaca —one of my top 3 singers and musicians, by the way. Today we delve into his brand new hard rock/AOR beauty, emerging alongside Norwegian maestro Andreas Nergård; Kindred North and their self-named, upcoming debut album.

Beyond his natural and amazing talent as a singer, Andi is also incredibly smart and sensitive when it comes to creating music on the spot. I definitely think that what sets a musician apart is their own “seal,” and Andi Kravljaca has a distinctive, unmistakable voice of his own, deeply tinted with 80’s magic. And now, with Kindred North, we get to discover what happens when all that talent, experience, and sensitivity come together in a project of their own, which pays heartfelt tribute to the wonderful music and spirit of the ’80s.

Hello Andi and thank you so much for your time.

To begin with, please tell us a bit about the reasons you named this brand new band as Kindred North. It is a gorgeous name, very catchy in my humble opinion…

It was a letters game, really! We knew we wanted a K and an N in there somewhere, for Kravljaca and Nergard. We also wanted something that evoked where we come from, which is Norway and Sweden. We considered a lot of names and landed on Kindred North as a good way to meet both goals. It’s also unique enough that there aren’t five other bands out there named that, which helps!

Kravjlaca/Nergard. Smart and lovely move I must say!

And what about the deer in the artwork? Is it sort of a totem for you guys? What is its meaning and why did you choose it?

I think, not initially, but more and more, yes! We’re already discussing how to put the deer into the next album cover. The design comes from Daniel Ignacio, who’s a talented artist I’ve worked with for several album projects in the past, and it’s just the sort of Nordic naturalist imagery we wanted to combine with a neon future aesthetic. It’s the feeling of something ancient being dragged into the future.

So the deer might be like Eddie, an ambassador to Kindred North

It very well could be!

I am really curious about who the mastermind was in the beginning of Kindred North, and the moment when the idea of creating the project came. Was it some moment in particular, or did it emerge spontaneously?

I really don’t remember there being a ‘mastermind’ moment where someone had a clear vision, but Andreas was the first to suggest that we make an AOR record, about three years ago. We’d been playing together in Nergard at that point for ten years and the idea of doing something new together really appealed to me. I then threw my own ideas into the mix and Kindred North just sort of became what it is over time!

Been sincere, were you guys crystal clear on the sound and style you wanted to achieve with Kindred North from the very beginning you started working together on it?

No, not at all, all we knew was that we wanted to make a record that paid respect to our common influences (Europe, Winger etc), and a record that was a little lighter and freer in its theme. What it became just grew over time as we wrote songs and started putting them together. It was exciting to approach an album so freely.

Which one was the first song or melody that definitely made you think “THIS is Kindred North?

For me it was “Natural High”, when we had that song done and written I knew we were on to something. The right mix of synthesizer and guitar, the lyrical theme, the ‘flavor’ of the rhythm guitars, it all sort of set into place once we made that song.

Where do the lyrics from Kindred North come from? Are they personal experiences, random stories or a combination of everything?

I think the themes are so universal that it’s not really necessary to drag our broken hearts into the mix. These aren’t our stories which we’re telling for our sake, they’re experiences everyone has had and that we can unite around.

Any recurring topic?

Love! We write love songs, in one way or another. Once you strip away dungeons and dragons, historical battles, political lyrics, high brow operatic concepts, you get right down to it – learning to trust again after being broken by love.

Love is a controversial and universal topic indeed. In this sense, tell us about the elements you think are essential for a lyric or melody to be recognizably Kindred North.

I think that it’s music of the 1980s but not from the 1980s. It needs to feel like something else than a comedy track of stereotypes. Wobbly VHS tape intros, spandex, neon colored guitars, headbands, moustaches. That’s the scenery that other bands wrap themselves in to be recognized as ‘80s, but that’s not what we wanted. We wanted to be a sincere, serious band, from the year 2026, which pays respect to an era we unironically loved.

So Kindred North pays real tribute to the 80’s as a whole, as a vibe so to speak. Honest music influenced by a magical, wonderful era. Along these lines I wonder, if you’d had to pick, what single word you would use to define Kindred North’s music, regardless of style or era.

Sincerity. We’re a sincere band and we mean what we play and sing. The notes are real, the performances are real, the sentiment is real. We’re not hiding behind irony or nostalgia or studio tricks. The performances are human and the message is sincere.

When it comes to creating music, it is not always possible to make it when working along with friends. Different musical tastes or influences, goals or even personal life moments can affect or even ruin a creative process with close people. Andreas and you have been friends for a long ride. Why do you think Kindred North did work?

I just think that we’re two pretty mellow, brainy dudes, who like music and like working together. Neither one of us has a huge ego, neither one of us gets plastered. We’re just adults who like what we do and have been doing it a long time!

It sounds like a natural, simple, and precise formula. Please tell us how you make it to integrate different musical experiences and influences to give birth to Kindred North?

I don’t know that we ever consciously integrated them, or had a plan. We just started writing music and as layers came on so did our influences. The music led the way!

This is so beautiful! I loved the scene of two besties just flowing with the music yet I feel, even though you guys have been working a long ride together, that there were some discoveries for you both. Beyond your experience together, for example, in the band Nergard; what did you discover from Andreas as a musician that you didn’t know before Kindred North?

What a killer ear he has for analog synths. In Nergard most of the stuff is symphonic and orchestrated with samples of traditional instruments. Analog synthesizers are a whole different beast, they exist on a different level of how to write, perform and mix. I’d never heard Andreas do his thing on analog synths and I was really impressed.

¿What do you think Andreas discovered from you?

I think not so much in terms of musicianship, but probably that I have a few talents on the band side, with doing artwork, writing copy, doing album promotion and so on, which of course as a hired gun in Nergard I never got involved with. I think the business side of me surprised him a little.

The Andi business man, somehow. That’s a great one.And personally speaking, what did you discover from yourself?

That I can still sing! I was seriously considering quitting singing after Aeon Zen ended in 2021, and for a while we were figuring out who the singer in Kindred North would be. Then I sort of started laying down demo tracks and we just went with that in the end, and I ended up recording the album. Without KN I don’t think I’d be singing anymore.

Uh! So thank God for Kindred North!

Andi, you have built a long, diverse career not only as a singer but also as a musician. How do you feel that your experience on Seventh Wonder, Thaurorod, Nibiru Ordeal or Aeon Zen has shaped your work in Kindred North?

I think every band we’re in teaches us about how to be with people and every record we make teaches us about the process of making a record. I’ve come to realize – a little too late in life in some respects – that being easy to work with is 90% of the job. Egos belong at the door and you need to maintain a productive state of fun. I’ve learned a lot about myself over the years.

Are Andi’s previous projects versions present in Kindred North, or do you think this new project unlocked a new version of Andi as an artist?

Everything I’ve ever done is present in Kindred North, not least the work I’ve done where I’ve been a session musician. That job requires you to be a vehicle for someone else’s creativity, and so you learn how another songwriter or producer thinks or works. That builds your own toolkit and mine’s gotten to be pretty big over the years!

What a huge, amazing learning this has been! Tell us about your labour as a session musician. How do those experiences nurture Kindred North?

Being a session musician is a real treat. I love discovering new music, new genres. You enter the studio to give the artist or producer what they want. You have to be quick, capable, and responsive to the reactions you get. Sometimes you’re recording a song you’re just then hearing for the first time, so you have minutes to find the emotional and tonal core of a song and come up with something that fits. And if you do it right, you get to do it again. Kindred North was a way to say “What have I learned from making all these records?”.

And speaking of what you have learned from all those experiences, I know Kindred North is not the first project on your own. Bioplan was your first solo project, where you pulled all your passion and nostalgia for 80’s rock and metal.

Is there anything from Bioplan that found its way into Kindred North?

Absolutely!! Even though it was purely instrumental, Bioplan was a blueprint for the playing style and the musical library which Kindred North then drew inspiration from. If Bioplan was the trailer, Kindred North is the movie. I think to anyone who listens it would be obvious that the same guitarist was playing in both bands.

Gorgeous! Bioplan the trailer, Kindred North the movie. ¡Simply gorgeous!

By the way, that evolution also brings to mind a broader question about the creative process in today’ s music. There is a controversy that is having a significant impact on how music is created, and music itself: artificial intelligence. What is your personal take on the use of AI in the musical creative process?

In my other life I work with innovation and technology, so let me say this from a position of someone who is neither illiterate or a luddite: FUCK AI. Fuck this technological genie in a bottle that takes pride in removing the only part of music that’s actually fun – writing and recording it!! It’s the perfect tool for a jaded business which just wants to ship units and count clicks and if that’s where music is headed then thanks and goodbye.

Starting from the point that music is an artistic, inherently human expression, do you think that what AI creates can be called “music”?

AI can absolutely generate music – a series of tones which when played in succession, form a coherent piece that’s held together by a theme. Sure. There’s no denying that the tools produce music. But music is not just sound, it’s connection, we yell to be heard and we listen to share. Who are we sharing with in this case?

Exactly. Connection may be the key to everything.

And honestly speaking, do you think we are facing an inevitable transformation of the musical industry, to an extent we don’t yet completely comprehend?

I’d like to ask how an industry which for years has been claiming that downloading a single song from the Internet is stealing, now suddenly feels entitled to use literal millions of songs, to train their tools. With piracy, you could at least make the argument that ‘I’d rather be heard than paid’ – but with AI, it’s just pure theft!

Hard-hitting statements, yet truths nonetheless. With this in mind,

What do you think we are risking as musicians and society if we start to hand over creative processes to artificial systems?

The big danger here is that it completely devalues music. If music takes four minutes to listen to but ten seconds to make, then it no longer makes sense to listen. I think that in this case, personal human creativity will become disproportionately valuable. We can make industrial bread, but we’d all rather eat artisanal bread and are prepared to pay more for it. Food is survival and cheap industrial food can be good, but what is the point of cheap industrial art?

Good question…

So what do you think is still impossible to replace about human creation?

AI is by its nature derivative. In every great genre there are really great visionary artists who are originators, who get their copycats over time. AI copies the material it’s been trained on, so who will originate?

From that perspective, AI-generated music would have an expiration date once the last musician dies or stops creating new beauties… And stepping back to Kindred North, How does this controversy on artificial intelligence impact the birth and identity of the band?

It very quickly became something we talked about – and probably crystallized when I was tracking guitars and vocals here in Stockholm. Modern music is produced and engineered to such levels of perfection that it actually doesn’t separate itself from AI. The guitars are so quantized and the vocals so auto-tuned, that you’re effectively becoming a bad and more expensive version of an AI sound. We realized we can’t go in that direction – the only way is to lean into humanity. Real performances, real noise, friction, feeling.

Is there something that Kindred North seeks to defend or stand for in the face of an industry that is becoming increasingly influenced by AI?

Absolutely. We want to prove that there is an audience for real songs written by real people, played on real instruments in a real studio, and where the actual performance hasn’t been engineered out. We want human music to sound human again – it’s the only way out of the AI trap.

Human connection through music… It sounds almost poetic, but man, it is so, so real!

Returning strictly to the music, what can we expect from this debut album on a musical and lyrical level?

It’s melodic hard rock with teeth! Big songs, big vocals, real playing, no apology for competence. Sincere songs which sound like 2026, but pay respect to 1986.

With teeth and fangs, I would say! KN is just kicking ass everywhere!

Now that the debut album is ready to hit the world, what are the immediate next steps for Kindred North? Any possible live performance?

The immediate job is to get the album heard! We have more visual material planned, posts, videos and live playthroughs. Playing live is absolutely on the table, but Kindred North is an artist duo rather than a conventional five-piece band, so taking it onstage means assembling the right musicians around us. We won’t do that halfway. When it happens, it should feel as though the deer has come alive and walked into the room.

As described on your social media, this debut album captures that mighty, melodic late-80s energy all along. How do you balance those classic influences with a sound that feels modern for a 2026 audience?

The classic part is in the values, not the costume. Great choruses, real playing, guitar solos that matter and singers who sound like they believe every word. That’s not an ‘80s recipe, it’s a timeless recipe! The modern part comes naturally because we’re making it now and have access to the equipment we have, as well as everything we’ve learned from decades of making records!

You describe those values as timeless. What is the ultimate message you want Kindred North to convey to people?

The future can once again be something worth believing in. You don’t have to be ironic about it. You can sing about love, hope, ecstasy and the future without winking at the audience. Make your noise, write your song. The world is a better place for every time a song is written, played or heard.

Thank you so much for this interview, Andi. As a closing, what message would you give to fans of Kindred North?

Keep listening to human music. Buy records, go to shows, learn an instrument, start a band, make a noise that only you could have made. And if Kindred North becomes part of your life along the way, please tell us, because that connection is the entire point. Thank you for joining us this early and playing Learn To Love Again at an irresponsible volume!

Interview by Elyna Steel