🎙️ INTERVIEW QUESTIONS — VAJRA (Set the Controls Reimagining)
🔥 OPENING / HOOK QUESTIONS (GRAB ATTENTION)
This isn’t being called a “cover” — it’s being called a continuation… what does that actually mean when you step into something as legendary as Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun?
It means we are absolutely unhinged. haha But seriously, it means we are deep fans who refuse to just karaoke someone else’s genius. Art doesn’t embalm the past, it metabolizes it. Pompeii still stands. The amphitheater still breathes. We didn’t want to recreate the ash. We wanted to walk into the heat that made it.
When you first decided to take on this track, was there ever a moment where you thought, “This is sacred ground… should we even touch this?”
Oh, for like five minutes. Then we got over ourselves. Honestly, the whole thing started because we were a brand-new band booked into rooms that needed more songs than we had written. Classic baby band problem. Will Dahl suggested the Floyd track at rehearsal one Saturday, I went home that night and pressed play, and that was it. It fit like it had been waiting for us.
🎸 CREATIVE PROCESS / ARTISTIC DEPTH
You mentioned the song felt like a portal — can you explain what that experience was like creatively? Did it feel more like writing… or discovering something that already existed?
Discovering, absolutely. The composition functions like an architecture of energy. You can step inside it, move through it, extend it. Which sounds very mystical until you’re actually in the studio at 2am trying to figure out what the mountain wants. hahaha But genuinely, it was less something to perform and more something to inhabit.
You lived inside this composition for years before recording it — what changed in your interpretation over time?
We realized we were honoring the song but not inside it. There’s a big difference. Reproducing what had already been done felt safe. And safety was definitely not the point. Barry Lyons heard us play it live in LA and told us we should record it, which was extremely validating and also slightly terrifying. It took years before we were actually ready to do it justice.
The original Pink Floyd version has this hypnotic minimalism — you’ve made it heavier, slower, more cinematic… what guided those choices?
Two things: our own musical DNA, and an obsession with doing right by the Pompeiians. We kept asking: what did the last 24 hours sound like emotionally? What is the sonic translation of paradise turning to horror? You don’t answer that question with something breezy.
🌋 POMPEII CONNECTION / STORYTELLING
You actually traveled to Pompeii and Herculaneum — how did physically being there change the way you approached the music?
Completely. We walked the streets, touched the walls, stood in the amphitheater where the film was shot. We read Pliny the Younger. We studied the timeline of the eruption. And then I had to ask myself, did I do these people justice? The history wasn’t abstract anymore. It was in the stone. When we came back to the studio, the song just… widened. It couldn’t help it.
Annamaria, you mentioned feeling a personal connection to that region — how much of that emotion made its way into your vocal performance?All of it. Every single bit. My whole approach was: honor the beauty and the horror because you can’t have one without the other there. That place is both paradise and catastrophe in the same breath, and if I’m not holding both of those things simultaneously in my body while I’m singing, then I’m lying. The voice knows when you’re lying. So does the mountain.
You studied Pliny the Younger’s account — what detail from that history stuck with you the most and influenced this piece?
Honestly, all of it, but what wrecked me was how recognizable their reactions were. I was in New York on 9/11. I was in Mumbai during 26/11. And reading Pliny’s account, I kept thinking we haven’t changed at all. The terror, the confusion, the “do we run or do we stay” paralysis. It’s the same across two thousand years. That’s humbling and also a little disturbing, honestly.
🎥 VIDEO / VISUAL EXPERIENCE
The video puts the viewer inside Pompeii’s final 24 hours — what was the hardest part about recreating something that intense and real?
This is going to sound completely unhinged, but getting it right for the ancestors. I genuinely felt they were with us during the whole process. When something went wrong technically, we’d look at each other like, okay, they’re telling us to take a different approach. Call it superstition, call it creative intuition. I call it working with good collaborators from the beyond.
You blended real footage with AI-assisted visuals — how did you balance authenticity with technology without losing the emotional weight?
Very carefully and with a lot of obsessive research. I was not going to have the wrong jewelry on the wrong character. She was found on her left side on a bed with coins and jewelry in a wooden box; he was found under a collapsed wall. The frescoes on the walls of the sacrarium had to be accurate. The architecture had to track. The clothing had to be right. We also shot my sequences in Amalfi, overlooking the same waters. The AI had to earn it.
Was there a specific moment in the video where you stepped back and thought, “This is exactly what we were trying to achieve”?
When it lands at the end. After all the revisions, all the edits, all the 2am debates, when it finally lands emotionally, I feel like it came through. The ancestors approved.
🧠 THEMES / MEANING / IMPACT
This release dropped on the Spring Equinox — how intentional was that, and what does that balance of light and darkness represent in this project?
One hundred percent. The song is sacred. Pompeii is sacred. You don’t drop something like this on a random Tuesday. hahaha The equinox felt right – that balance of light and dark mirrors what Pompeii was: paradise and hell, existing in the same breath.
The song is described as both remembrance and a wake-up call — what do you want listeners to sit with after experiencing it?
An emotion. An inspiration. A calling. Whatever that means to them. I’m not here to dictate the experience. I just want them to feel something real.
There’s a lot of talk about the piece feeling “unfinished” or still moving — what do you think is still echoing from this story today?
Literally everything. The town is still being unburied. Archaeologists are still finding new rooms, new people, new stories. And when we were down there, Nick Mason was playing in the Teatro Grande. The place is alive. The song is alive. It never stopped.
🎶 BAND IDENTITY / SOUND
Vajra blends progressive metal, art rock, and cinematic soundscapes — where do you feel you sit in today’s music landscape?
Somewhere in the outcast section. Hahahaha. We don’t fit neatly into a genre, we’re more concerned with channeling something divine than with being commercially viable which, I will admit, makes a lot of practical things very difficult. But here we are anyway.
For fans of Tool, Pink Floyd, and A Perfect Circle — what do you think Vajra brings that’s completely its own?
Our lives. Our filters. The specific strange alchemy of everything we’ve lived through, witnessed, and survived; and how that informs every note, every lyric, every visual choice. You can’t replicate that. That’s the point.
Your previous tracks have charted and gained major attention — how does this release compare to your past work creatively?
This one is a slow burn. Probably the least “commercial” thing we’ve done, if we’re using that word generously. But it’s also maybe the most us.
⚡ INDUSTRY / BIG PICTURE
In a time where music is often fast and disposable, you created something that took years — do you think the industry has lost patience for this kind of art?
Constantly. And we do it anyway. We are guided by something outside of ourselves that is firmly uninterested in the content calendar.
Do you think audiences are craving deeper, more immersive experiences like this again?
I think they never stopped. They just got buried under an algorithm. Like Pompeii, honestly: still there, still waiting to be uncovered.
🚀 PROMO /
For listeners discovering Vajra for the first time — what’s the one thing you want them to feel when they hear this track?
Inspired. That’s the whole thing.
👉 And reminder to everyone: Vajra’s reimagining of “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” is out now on all major platforms — plus the full cinematic video experience is available now… go check it out.
🔚 CLOSER / PERSONAL
After living inside this piece for so long… was it hard to finally let it go?
Every single time. You live inside something that long, it becomes part of you. But at some point the ancestors say release it, and you listen.
What’s next for Vajra — are we continuing down this cinematic path or heading somewhere completely unexpected?
We are working on new music. No specific release dates yet. We follow the current. Wherever it goes, we go.
Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Progressive metal/art rock band Vajra has released their haunting reinterpretation of Pink Floyd’s “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” available now on all major platforms. Arriving as a Pompeii Reimagining, the track stands as something rare: a piece of music that earns the weight it carries.
This is not a cover. It’s a continuation. Originally sparked by the practical need to extend a live set, the song evolved into something far more immersive. Inspired by the stark, elemental atmosphere of Live at Pompeii, Vajra spent years living inside the composition before recording it. Replicating it would have been easy. That was never the goal. “The song feels alive… like a portal. It asked something of us. We realized that to carry it forward, we had to enter its heat.”
For fans of:
– Tool
– Pink Floyd
– A Perfect Circle
About Vajra:
Vajra is a New York-based progressive metal/art rock band blending cinematic soundscapes, ritualistic intensity, and philosophical depth. Previous singles include “Truth Has Many Lies,” which premiered on Revolver and charted #2 on Mediabase Activator, “Love Is a Battlefield,” featured on MTV Live’s Metal Thrashing Madness, and “Crown or Crucify,” which reached the Top 40 on the Mediabase Active Rock Chart and #7 on Billboard’s New & Active Rock Chart.
Vocalist Annamaria Pinna and guitarist Dave Sussman traveled to Pompeii and Herculaneum, walking the same streets, standing in the amphitheater where the original performance was filmed. They studied Pliny the Younger’s firsthand account alongside archaeological and volcanological records of the eruption’s final hours. “My family is from that region. Maybe they were there, or knew of it when it happened. I don’t know. But I feel that story in my cells. If we were going to reinterpret this song, we had to honor the people of Pompeii as fully and honestly as we could.”
The accompanying video was written, shot, edited, and produced entirely by Pinna and Sussman. Blending original footage captured in Pompeii and Herculaneum with AI-assisted visuals, it reconstructs the city’s final 24 hours through a first-person lens. What begins as an ordinary day quickly turns catastrophic. It doesn’t just tell the story. It puts you inside it.
More than five decades after its creation, the original composition still resonates. Vajra expands its architecture into something heavier, slower, and more cinematic. Pinna’s ethereal vocals drift through the mix like smoke through stone, while the hypnotic pulse remains intact. The ritual is still there. The tension builds differently. The silence at the end lingers longer. “We feel that the song is sacred, and it is still echoing. So are the images. There’s something unfinished in it. Something still moving.”
Released on the Spring Equinox, a moment of balance between darkness and light, this reimagining stands as both remembrance and a wake-up call. The song is out now. The video is out now. Listen. Watch. Then sit with it.
Follow Vajra:
Spotify: Spotify
Apple Music: Apple Music
Facebook: Facebook
Instagram: Instagram
YouTube: YouTube
Bandcamp: Bandcamp
Lineup:
Annamaria Pinna — Vocals
Dave Sussman — Guitar
Sahaj Ticotin — Bass
Jimmy DeMarco — Drums
Mixed by Dave Sussman & Sahaj Ticotin
Mastered by Howie Weinberg