Eagle Rock Entertainment issued the new album from Russia’s premiere rock band PUSHKING, entitled The World As We Love It, on February 1st. It is a 19-track celebration, composed of re-recorded selections from Pushking’s catalogue featuring some very special guests. PAUL STANLEY (KISS), BILLY F GIBBONS (ZZ TOP), ALICE COOPER, STEVE VAI, GLENN HUGHES, JOE LYNN TURNER, KERI KELLI (Alice Cooper), STEVE STEVENS (BILLY IDOL), and NUNO BETTENCOURT (EXTREME) are just some of the elite rock alumni who RSVP’d for this musical party.

Guitar International caught up with Pushking’s Oleg Savilov to talk about their latest record, Russian rock, and working with some of the biggest names in rock history. Check out an excerpt from the interview below:

Matt Warnock: How did you choose the guest artists on your latest album? Did you know them before and had you thought about working with them for a long time, or was it a recent decision to bring them on board?

Oleg Savilov: "We were acquainted only with Dan McCafferty because we made a video together and recorded one song during Nazareth’s show in Saint-Petersburg, but that was eight years ago. That song was called 'I Love You' and it was rearranged for our new album.

I can’t say that we only chose the guests, they also chose us to participate on our album. I’m sure that the main reason was the music. The songs suited them, bcause we picked each song specifically for each guest artist. Only three years ago, we couldn’t even imagine that all these guys would agree to participate on one of our records. And if we told people that this was going to happen they would have laughed. Who would believe that this would happen?

We still don’t fully believe that it happened. Just imagine, every musician has a dream to record something and play a gig with someone great, but this can only happen with one in a million people. And we are Russians, this is the second problem. If this happens with a band from any European country, that’s predictable, but we have a double responsibility. There’s a lot of talk in the media concerning our album. Some people are ready to see Russian guys eating black caviar in Courchevel and wasting money, so their idea was, 'Yep, I know those crazy Russians, they just bought all stars they needed,' another opinion was 'They invited grandpa’s and no one is interested in this music now.'

But, thanks to other people who are not so envious and who kindly support us and share our luck. I can say one thing, all our guests are not poor people and most of them are legends and will stay legends forever. They participated because they love our music, because every song was picked exclusively for each person."

Go to this location for the complete interview.