The band Alhena are: Dominika Kapusniak (vocal & violin), Piotr Pryka (keyboards), Tomasz Bogulski (guitar), Bartosz Kazimierski (guitar), Piotr Grugel (drums) and Maciej Tonder (bass).
Tomasz Bogulski
guitar
Dominika Kapusniak
vocal & violin
Piotr Grugel
drums
Bartosz Kazimierski
guitar
Piotr Pryka
keyboards
Maciej Tonder
bass
The band’s history dates back to January 2010 when there was an initiatory meeting of people who having left their previous projects decided to pursue their own musical vision. United in this vision Piotr Kowalski, Tomasz Bogulski, Piotr Grugel and then-bassist Robert Puk formed Alhena. In the following months a vocalist Katarzyna Dziemianowicz joined the band followed by Tadeusz Kolecki who replaced Robert. With this line-up the band began intensive work on creating their own material that resulted in the recording of the five tracks EP “Alhena” in 2011. The recording session for the album took place at MG-Studio in Bydgoszcz under the production supervision of Marcin Grzella.
After a series of concerts promoting the album release as well as its enthusiastic reception from the public and many favorable reviews in the home and foreign media (Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, USA, Canada), the band began working on material for their debut album.
At the same time, Alhena contributed to other compilations e.g. in February 2012 the band was invited to take part in the compilation “Des filles et des riffs, vol.3” organized by the French Des filles et des riffs (the compilation was released in June 2013 by the Savage Prod label with worldwide distribution handled by the well-known French label Season of Mist); in September 2012, in another, also French compilation “World of Glass” (released by World of Glass); in January 2013 – “Sampler” (released by Halotan Records); in April 2013 – in the US compilation “Virgines Metallium” (released by Delinquent Records USA).
The period of Alheny‘s work on the first album is referred to by the community as ‘the longest recording session in the history of Polish show-business’. The material was ready to be recorded as early as 2013, the recordings started in the autumn of 2014 and were finally finished in mid-2018. This was due, among other things, to a house reshuffle in the band’s line-up, which, as Piotr Grugel recalled in an interview with the MetalSide portal, was mainly related to the prose of life:
Moving to other cities, an excess of professional obligations, sometimes material fatigue, or simply a different perspective on various issues which made creative collaboration impossible. (…) In addition in the meantime we lost our rehearsal room which resulted in a forced halt to activities for several months. At the very end there was also a major turmoil in terms of the album’s graphic design, which ended up with the change of the person doing the cover art. (…) And when we got through that too, exhausted but alive, with the material recorded and ready for release, we decided not to do it by ourselves. (…) So the next stage was to look for a label and then the releasing process itself. At the end of all of this we realized that it was year 2019.
After Katarzyna Dziemianowicz, Natalia Bassak took on vocals in 2012, followed by Marta Bejma eighteen months later. The position of bass player also underwent some changes: Tadeusz Kolecki was replaced by Grzegorz Ostrowski, who, however, finally gave way to his predecessor, for whom, in the meantime, the band was supported by his son, Jędrzej Kolecki.Meanwhile, in 2017, Patryk Durko officially took over as bassist and Alhena‘s line-up stabilized for a longer period.
On the occasion of the band’s concert at the XII Progressive Rock Festival in Torun in July 2018, Alhena self-released the single “Like a Doll“, heralding their forthcoming album. A music video for the song was made in April 2019. Meanwhile, in September, the band partnered with Around Music label resulting in the long-awaited release of Alhena‘s first full-length album “Breaking the Silence… …by Scream“. The title ties in with the lyrics of one of the songs from the album, but is also a kind of foreshadowing of the band’s intensified activity in the near future.
At the end of 2019, keyboardist changed from Piotr Kowalski to Piotr Pryka and the following year the line-up expanded with the addition of a second guitarist Bartosz Kazimierski. For a while after Marta Bejma had left, Magdalena Zach was a vocalist in Alhena, but in June 2022 she was replaced by Dominika Kapusniak who also plays violin. In 2023 Maciej Tonder was announced the new bass player.
Alhena‘s new vocalist and violinist Dominika Kapusniak believes that the violin adds a certain sparkle to the old material. The other musicians also recognized that the violin and the extra guitar strings were the missing elements here, mainly because all of Alhena‘s work focuses on sound painting, fabulousness and an outpouring of sensitivity.
Each of us portrays this sensitivity in a different way, but we share a similar thinking and approach to music (…)
– says Dominika.
In February 2023 Alhena presented the single “Nemesis 2.0“, which is as the title suggests a rearrangement of the song “Nemesis” from the album “Breaking the Silence… …by Scream“. The new version shows the band’s musical development and outlines their sound explorations at the time, while highlighting the band’s long-standing traditions. As Piotr Grugel said in an interview with the Polska Płyta / Polska Muzyka portal:
It’s not hard to see that this latest release is strongly different, more mature, more polished and sounds completely different, more modern than its original or anything Alhena have released so far, including our last album. But it’s still Alhena. So on the one hand, it’s kind of a reference to our roots, but at the same time we’re showing that we’re in a completely different place, a far cry from where we were back then.
The band members emphasize that they are still growing, evolving and improving. They are not afraid of changes, all the more so if it is to benefit not only the band itself, but above all their listeners. The new material is already being played in concerts. In the musicians’ opinion it is a big step forward, but as they assure it will always be “Alhenish”.
We will always be a rock-metal band, and both terms, rock and metal, can really be understood very, very broadly.
– Piotr Grugel concludes.
