Zastava Are Playing SXSW
Portraits by Carrigan Drallos.
presented by
You heard it here first.
Zastava, Detroit’s greatest band, is playing The Monster Children SXSW Showcase presented by our friends at AS Colour. We first heard Zastava back in 2024, a friend of a friend sent a link to some of the band’s early recordings and we fell in love. Since then, we have done an interview, and seen them play several times, each experience a taste of ecstasy. Their latest release, an EP called Buildings, released in 2025, and so in preparation for their set, we asked Mateja Matic and Arman Bonislawski to talk us through each track, word for word, texted, and only slightly edited for clarity.
Running:
Mateja Matic: This song probably took the longest to write out of the whole album. It sorta happened that there was one part we all really believed in but couldn't quite figure out how to build the song around it. Once we cracked the code or whatever this song always felt like it was supposed to be first in the sequencing.
Arman Bonislawski: This track felt like a problem child for a long time. It took a couple long breaks in writing and coming back to it before we felt comfortable with where it was going. The outro to this song is one of my favorite things to play live personally.
Truth:
AB: For some reason we have gotten told so many times this reminds people of the strokes and I don’t get it but it’s funny to hear how many times it’s come up. This one has really adapted to the playing styles of our new lineup since we first wrote it with different members.
MM: This is the oldest song on the album. I want to say it was written some time in late 2022 and it was written around a bass line our former bandmate Conor Lynch wrote. Shoutout Conor Lynch by the way. Funny anecdote about this song is that someone once told us "if Julian Casablancas heard this he'd put a gun in his mouth." Absolutely bananas thing to say and we still don't really get the comparison, but we appreciated the compliment(?) nonetheless.
Station:
MM: I read an entire book in one sitting from 8pm until like 5 in the morning one night, I slept for a few hours and then headed off to band practice. We were working on this song that I hadn't figured out vocals for yet, we were calling it "water bottle" as a placeholder. I sort of vomited out the lyrics in one go that day and realized it was entirely about this book I spent all night reading. I've never written lyrics about any book or movie before and I haven't since, but we ran with it because it fit the vibe of the song. Don't ask me the name of the book, I won't tell you.
AB: When writing this I think we wanted to focus on having a song that really shifts into a new feel and not feel like verse/ chorus type parts. I think it was one of the first times we made a conscious effort to focus on the form of a song going into it just as much as the content.
Out Here:
AB: I’m really proud of this song. I really love the energy that was captured in the recorded take we stuck with. When playing live I think we make the whole outro and everything build up to something big and frantic.
MM: This is our pop song?
Fences:
AB: Very pop sounding and different compared to everything else I would say. It was exciting to work on this as a band during the album writing cause it was so different, we liked the reprieve from the moody stuff when working on this. We can be fun and light if we try hard enough.
MM: This started as a bit of a joke because Cam had pointed out every song on the album was sort of minor-key ish/dark and we should try working on some brighter sounding stuff. Everyone in the band loves baseball (except for me) so there is a line about "swinging for the fences" that was very much included for the sake of making the band laugh. This song was written entirely as a way to entertain ourselves and felt a lot less "serious" at the time. It ended up coming together really naturally though and we all figured this one out really quickly.
Interlude:
MM: Originally Interlude was just a part of Fences as some weird ending part, but we decided to split them up. Guest drumming appearance on the record here by our friend Drew Coughlin formerly of Heavenly Blue and currently of IHON. Probably the nicest guy you'll ever meet.
MM: We pretty much solidified this in studio when recording the album. It was a good practice in decision making to commit to how this track would go when actually in the room recording it. I think it’s great to go into the studio setting about 90% prepared and let the rest be the spontaneous moments that you can use for story telling behind the music later.
68:
MM: I've always had a fascination with the story of the dancing plague in 1518. The working title of this song was just "Waltz" which was never meant to stick but sort of put the image in my head of an old timey dance. It was bizarre to me imagining people dancing for days non stop literally to the point of death. I read a ridiculous theory once that they went mad with dancing fever due to a forest fire or something nearby where a certain bush with a high concentration of DMT caught fire. People are stupid. I'm team "ergot poisoning theory" for the record.
AB: I think we did a great job of sounding dramatic in this one. Our friend Indira who played viola on the track was great to work with and brought so much to the recording. When we work on new stuff now I feel like at some point someone always says some little quip about “maybe come time to record this Indira can lay down some viola for the track”. They really helped make that song what it is.
Buildings:
MM: The original demo of this was a borderline slowcore/post rock dirge-y thing that never really gelled. One practice Cam just started playing it basically triple speed and it stuck. This was sort of the nucleus of the whole record for us in terms of sound and feeling so when it came time to name the album, "Buildings" was the only thing that felt right.
AB: Our first ever demo of this song was like a slow-core song. It’s really hilarious how it turned out the way it did and is sort of the catalyst behind an entire punky/noisy record that we would end up making. When working on new stuff it’s good to look back on this one and let yourself open up to the idea to completely shift gears on something to make it work.
