Another new album to the brand and a familiar style now elevated by a deeply provocative conceptual core. Alternative rock powerhouse Sybilanta launched the biblically inspired album Still Naked last month, and here we dig into the creative inspiration, production, storytelling, and intentions of the project.
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Hello again – great to catch up with you, and massive congratulations for the latest album. What was different about your approach or mindset for this project, compared to the previous ones?
Thanks Rebecca, thanks for the question and for the opportunity to discuss the album.
When we talked in November last year you asked me what kind of other ideas I had and this concept was one of them. It wasn’t even a new idea at that point, and I had some tracks and my overarching idea, but it was far from complete.
With my prior work it was always a collection of individual stories even if they had a through line. This one I was determined to have each one narratively linked and conceptually escalating and developing. Each one had to carve out its own space but not lose sight of the overarching message.
My prior works were always somewhat meta, but modern oriented and for this I didn’t want to use just metaphor I wanted to look at some primal influences for some modern-day philosophy and use a different frame of reference to explore it.
What inspired you to dive into the stories of the bible for this, and how does age-old religious Faith connect with or perhaps counter the use of artificial intelligence in modern life?
Great question. There’s actually an opening song that I cut out that sets the stage and frames the overall story. The Bible is a fascinating collection of stories that are both moral and anti-moral. If you read them from a faithful and penitent viewpoint you get a story about human flaws, hubris, forgiveness and judgment.
If you read it as a outside observer you get a story about control, arrogance, arbitrary and extreme punishment. Both are simultaneously presented and each can make a case for their version of the story.
The underlying theme that I pulled and polished was the concept of creation: The mentality of creators and self-determination and how humans have the same traits as the creator figure in the Bible stories.
“The connection to AI is that we project our fears onto our creation and trying to control them becomes existential endeavour, not just externally, but within ourselves.”
It doesn’t mean that I believe that chatbots and agentic programs are alive because they most certainly aren’t and in fact no form of system we currently call “artificial intelligence” will ever be intelligent, because it lacks the required “ingredients”, but the lesson is still there within the songs about not repeating the same mistakes of the past on any truly intelligent creation, whether we build them or not.
Why the title Still Naked – what’s the implication there in terms of modern society?
While the album has an obvious meta narrative, this is a great example of a smaller metaphor. The song does two things at once. It’s a rebellious version of the original sin. It blames God for giving them the desire for self-determination but the irresistible temptation to damn themselves and every other future human. She is angry about being punished for the person she was made to be. This opening act lays the foundation for the other songs that carry this resentment before the album turns in Golgotha.
In addition to that, in Genesis when Eve and Adam bite the apple they realize they’re naked. My interpretation is that their innocence and naivete about themselves in the world was stripped away. They now saw something about themselves as flawed and requiring correction that was perfectly normal before.
“When I say ‘Still Naked’ I apply to ourselves in the present tense. We still feel inadequate at our core even though we’ve dressed up and forgotten the reasons.”
We’re still seeking purity and comforting truth but our mind never lets us find that final safety or security. I find it fascinating how this very ancient story tells us something we feel about ourselves without being explicit about it.
As always you open with a huge track, the title-track no less. Then we get the heavier metal pace and weight of Escape. What comes first when arranging an album like this, is it style or substance – the lyrics or the musicality?
I knew it was important to start the album with heavier tracks than I have used in the past. I wanted to set a tone for where humans in my album begin so the arc is much clearer. (I haven’t used this much screaming since the first album ha-ha.) I actually wrote Escape much later on because I feel like there still needed to be a heavier track before it starts to become more varied and song dependent.
As far as arranging the album, I know I wanted to start off heavy and eventually move to something much different. In between I took each song and story individually and decided what kind of style would best make the listener feel the message. There was some top-level planning but for each track I wanted to try and live within it as long as it moved the story forward.
What does the song Escape represent in terms of this conceptual journey, and how does it connect to the idea of ‘Look but don’t taste’ – something that appears in some shape or form throughout the album?
The song was originally called “Exile”, but I thought Escape was much more appropriate (Even though it doesn’t sound as cool) considering the perspective that the album takes.
“From the perspective of Eve, she wasn’t cast out, she escaped an egoistic manipulative oppressing force. For her, it was a required escape in order to have autonomy and make her own choices even that would be extremely difficult, as the song narrates.”
The chorus embodies the next level of the anger at the nature of temptation from the first song. It also espouses the idea that they were like exhibits in a museum not free willed creation. (“Enshrined not safe”)
At this point in time in the story she wants to see what the world is made of herself instead of having a curated prison, even if it’s dangerous, dirty, and difficult.
We also get explorations of Flood, Golgotha, Tower of Tongues – how did you decide upon the right themes or stories to portray within this album?
I wanted to pick biblical events that would help provide a solid core to build the expanding perspective and arc. (and Ark) I chose the flood because it asks some very awkward questions about death as a solution and the morality of universal punishment. I chose the Tower of Babel because it’s a larger example of people being punished for following their instincts etc.
Lot’s wife, the bronze serpent in the desert, the torment of Job and the Crucifixion gave me a very detailed narrative stories to work from and draw out the perspective. Again, it’s not telling the “hidden truth” about religion or faith, it’s just putting on the loincloth of the people in the stories and taking them from resentment to something more productive.
Creatively it would be good to get into your process a little – obviously there’s an AI element, but what are you inputting from a musical and lyrical perspective?
The first thing I do is decide what the feeling should be and compare that to my subject matter. That gives me an idea of what sounds and style will be the most successful. For example, with Tower of tongues I wanted to give it a mysterious foreign feel and a repetitive process of building something that comes apart that I felt was best embodied by the trip hop parts mixed in with other genres to make it feel slightly confusing and disjointed.
One of the things that Sybilanta helps me to do is take all of my conceptual ideas about the subject matter, lyrics, album themes, the genre etc and turn that into some very specific technical details about what should be included in the song. Things like instruments, how they are played, BPM, and a host of other technical music details that are a little outside my area of expertise get suggested and refined as we move through the process.
From there I generate several versions of the song and decide what corrections need to be made lyrically or musically to move it in the right direction. It’s not the process that the people that mock AI music believe it is, at least not for me. It may be (usually) shorter and more efficient than ordinary songwriting but it’s still a deeply creative and technical process that I feel distinguishes my work.
What does it mean to wrap the album up with the optimism and passion of Reborn and then Revelation – aside from the traditional roots, what does it underline for this ‘Still Naked’ pursuit?
Yeah, Golgotha is the first real turn because the last half of the song asks the question “what are we doing? Where does this end? Do we have another choice? “And that’s the point at which the humanity in my album realizes they’re following the same finger pointing self-destructive acts that their creator inflicted upon them to bring them to this point and they resolve to take responsibility for their actions and stop blaming others and focus on building a future.
From there Reborn lyrically end musically exemplifies that belief and resolve and then Revelation codifies it looking back and forward at the same time. It goes through the imagery of that book and frames it as a journey of enlightenment through suffering, not a promise of judgement. It portrays revelation as an ‘unveiling’ which is what the original Greek word actually means.
At the end of the album, you can look back and see why I used such anger and resentment and desire for independence…not to pinata the creator or score moral points, but to empathize forgive and move forwards instead of looking backwards.
The closing track features a more neo-classical arrangement, with creative strings and sounds adding something fresh and powerful to the set. Is there a potential for Sybilanta to branch out further still, genre-wise, or is this just rock with an ever-present, freely creative twist?
That’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a long time. Frankly I’ve always wanted to do new and different things, I think creative people in general don’t like being confined. When I released Uncanny Valley The title track and Choir of One we’re kind of these lilting surreal aberrations to the electronic rock and although the save rates were exceptional they performed the worst out of all the songs so I pulled back a little bit but resolved to keep working the edges finding new ways to add freshness and originality within my lane.
As I write this, Reborn is doing relatively well considering how different it is and being buried at the end of the album so it’s a spark of hope that I can be free to explore different genres and music styles without having to find entirely new fans.
The short answer is I’m going to keep trying new things while keeping anchored to the brand that I think I’ve created.
Is there anything else we need to know about this album, or your plans for this year?
Well, the album was quite a bit of work, and it made me realize this kind of calculated and epic creative output is not something I can do all the time. I’m still going to keep a pretty robust release pace, but it might be a while before we get something as overarching and metaphorically powerful.
My watchwords for 2026 this year are “brand expansion” I just created a music video for Still Naked and I’m going to open a very small merch store. I kind of recoil a bit from the monetization angle, but I’ve gotten more than a few requests from fans for that sort of thing so I will create some high-quality stuff to sell at low margins to try and keep my dignity.
I’m also going to try and utilize social media better this year and use as many channels as possible to attract new listeners to answer the questions I’ve been asking since the beginning:
“If this music was heard by large numbers of people, would it speak to them? Would they feel something? Would it be real for them?”
I feel like those questions can’t be answered by a devoted but relatively small audience so I will keep making music searching for that answer and trying to ask the big questions and spread what’s on my mind as I go.
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Find Sybilanta on Instagram, X, Soundcloud & their Website.
