Ukrainian musician, producer, and serviceman Oleh Hrabar, also known as GRABAR, has released the single and video ‘Tera’ — a work that explores the emotional and mental changes a person undergoes amid constant loss, as well as the importance of ‘preserving the ability to feel’. The video was directed by the musician himself. The recording also features drummer Myshko Birchenko, guitarist Yevhen Puhachov, and trumpeter Denis Adu, while sound producer Lucas Bird handled the final production, synths, and backing vocals. DTF Magazine takes a closer look at the release of ‘Tera’
About the track
‘Tera’ is based on a demo recording created by Oleh Hrabar in a frontline area in the fall of 2025. In a comment for DTF Magazine, Oleh says that creating music during his military service became a form of therapy for him, and later it was this very process that helped him recognize the internal changes he was going through.
‘I first felt the reality of war in Bakhmut in early 2023. Later, antidepressants became part of my life as a way to support my mental state during service and through loss. At the same time, I didn’t notice how much I was changing; I stopped feeling anything at all, as if I didn’t even exist. My sense of identity was gradually fading, even though I was still alive. This work feels like the closing chapter of that period. Now I’m working with a therapist and have stopped taking the medication. The emotions are coming back, the musician says.
According to the musician, he followed his ‘usual pattern of pouring emotions into music’ while working on the demo, without an initial concept, and ‘only understood what it was about during mixing and assembly’.
‘This track is about the emotional distortion that emerges when a person lives for a long time in a reality shaped by loss and anxiety. ‘Tera’ here symbolizes an enormous, almost monstrous amount of pain and silence accumulating inside. But this song is not about indifference — it is about the importance of preserving the ability to feel: love, empathy, and the experience of grief as part of what makes us alive’.
The track’s title refers to the prefix ‘tera-’, which stems from the Greek word τέρας — meaning ‘monster’ — and signifies something excessive and nearly incomprehensible. In Oleh’s interpretation, this refers to the overwhelming scale of emotions one is compelled to mute or push away within themselves.
Another metaphor for the song’s core idea — ‘the dissolution of one’s personality within circumstances and experiences’ — was the participation of guest musicians: Myshko Birchenko, Yevhen Puhachov, Denis Adu, and Lucas Bird.
Oleh explains: ‘It became a logical addition because, behind the parts played by professional musicians whom I deeply respect, there was almost nothing left of me. The parts from the demo also gradually faded away; only the general outlines remained recognizable’.
About the video
The video for ‘Tera’ was directed by Oleh Hrabar himself.
According to the musician, the video was inspired by ‘Pyl’, a 2014 work by Ukrainian artist Mykhailo Alekseienko. The seven-minute video, filmed during the events of the Revolution of Dignity, shows the artist gradually erasing a cast of his own face into dust. Through this act, Alekseienko sought to emphasize that even when a person is physically destroyed, their identity and memory remain behind like dust — as a trace.
‘It was only during the final editing stage that I realized the image of the ‘death mask’ had originated shortly before the war. Around that time, I became friends with artist Mykhailo Alekseienko, and we spent a lot of time talking about visual art and artistic concepts in general. His work ‘Pyl’ deeply affected me, lodged itself in my subconscious, and resurfaced five years later in my own work. So I immediately called Mykhailo and admitted that I had stolen his idea — or at the very least, unconsciously wanted to erase the previous author. Mykhailo appreciated the work, and we agreed to call it inspiration rather than theft’.
At the same time, the visual language of the ‘Tera’ video continues the aesthetic line of Oleh’s previous diptych-style music video, released in August 2025. Read more about the project in our article.
About GRABAR
Oleh Hrabar is a musician, screenwriter, and former television producer who has collaborated with Yevhen Puhachov, Andrii Barmalii, Oleksandr Yavdyk, and other Kyiv-based musicians.
In addition to ‘CHTMS’, GRABAR’s discography includes six singles, such as ‘MOVA’, ‘Doshchi’, and ‘Khodyt Tuha’, which was recorded at the Khanenko Museum.
Alongside his musical work, Oleh and his fellow servicemen continue to develop an initiative of music camps for soldiers, where, together with Ukrainian musicians, they ‘document and reinterpret their own experiences through creativity’. In December 2025, the album ‘Camp3’ was released, featuring tracks by fighters of the Third Assault Brigade created during the first such intensive program.
