Interview with Ahráyeph (February 2026)

Earlier this year, Ahráyeph resurfaced from the shadows with a new double single: The Indian Summer / January Pale. Released at the threshold of 2026, the songs arrived not as a declaration but as a quiet inevitability. Two pieces instead of one — born from seasons, yet ruled by feeling rather than climate. One lingers in the dying warmth of light that should have faded long ago, soft and melancholic; the other sinks into January’s colourless aftermath, the long comedown after celebration, where emptiness settles in and refuses to loosen its grip. Together, they breathe in, and exhale, the first fragile signal of a new year.

It is this refusal of stillness that brings me back to Raf Ahráyeph. The last time we spoke was November 2024, yet the distance feels purely theoretical — as if the music never truly stopped speaking in the meantime. Barely months after The Final Hurt left its bruise, his creative mind continues to circle restlessly, turning fatigue, observation and quiet unease into sound. In Ahráyeph’s universe, weariness is not an end point but raw material; discomfort is not silenced, but shaped, translated, and given voice.

For those stepping into this world for the first time, Ahráyeph is not a band in the traditional sense, but a solitary conduit through which a Belgian musician channels his inner terrain. Progressive forms entwine with gothic melancholy, creating songs that feel both meticulously sculpted and painfully necessary. The term Prog Goth may serve as a signpost, but it cannot contain the atmosphere that defines this project — music that hangs in the air like smoke in an abandoned cathedral, beautiful and suffocating in equal measure. Raf once reduced it to a simple truth: dark is good. And in Ahráyeph’s hands, darkness is not an aesthetic choice, but an honest language — one that confronts rather than consoles, carving clarity out of shadow.

Q: Raf, thank you for taking the time to speak with us again at this fading moment of the day. It’s genuinely a pleasure to be back in conversation with you. The last time we spoke was in November 2024, as if it were yesterday. If you were to describe that period through song titles — either from your own work or from artists you look up to — which titles would come to mind?

Raf: Hello Hayley. It's also a genuine pleasure on my part to be talking to you again.

A lot can happen in a year and a handful of months on many levels, so there are potentially a lot of songs that could serve as descriptors for certain times and events during that period, so I suppose I could fill this entire interview with song titles. Some that come to mind are 'Promised Land' by Queensrÿche, Anne Clark's 'The Key', Porcupine Tree's 'Arriving Somewhere But Not Here', Marillion's 'The Rakes Progress' and 'Be Hard On Yourself', Pink Floyd's 'Welcome To The Machine' and, finally, the songs on my own new single 'The Indian Summer' and 'January Pale'.

Q: Judging by the songs you mentioned, it sounds — lightly put — like a path with its fair share of obstacles. What keeps you going in this world? What lifts your spirits?

Raf: Rolling over and giving up isn't going to improve your situation, so the only alternative is to keep going. And as for lifting my spirits, there's a person I talk to every day, whose sense of humor, insights and creative way of expression - and creativity as a whole - always manages to bring some light and levity to my day. That helps to keep my spirits up as well as to sometimes provide a distraction from those obstacles when they get too much...