INTERVIEW: METHEDRAS

 

Genre: Thrash Metal

Country: Italy

Questions by: Nick Parastatidis

Answers by: METHEDRAS

Site: Facebook

1. Hello. What made you choose Thessaloniki for your live show on October 18th? Have you had any experience with the city or its music scene before?"

Hi and thank you for the opportunity! Thessaloniki was since the beginning of the tour planning one of the best choices so far, a city with a great metal scene and great bands as well like Firewind, we can’t wait to be there, never had the chance so it’s very exciting to play there for the first time!

2. In your early days featured two guitarists, but you've since scaled back to a single guitarist. What led to this change, and how has it impacted your music? Have you found that the streamlined sound has allowed for new creative possibilities, or has it required adjustments to your songwriting and arrangements?

Since “System Subversion” we decided to have only one guitar player, there isn’t a specific reason about it, we just found out after the second guitarist left the band that it could be perfect to us a 4 elements band. In the end this didn’t affect too much our way to compose music, it could be more of a live trouble because of the guitar riffs under solos for example, but it’s fine also with just one guitar and a huge bass to fill the lack of another 6 strings.

3. Why did you choose to self-release your latest album 'Human Deception' instead of going through a traditional label? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, and do you see yourself continuing to release music independently in the future?

Basically we wanted to completely control everything about our music, without agreement limitations. Labels are still good to work with, but if you find the right persons to take care about promo and media nowadays you can have all the ways to spread your music all around the world, even if radios and magazines are still largely followed it is indeed true that the music is running on the web, which is the main place where to let your music goes.

4. METHEDRAS has been active for over two decades now. How do you feel the band has evolved musically and personally since your early days?

It has changed so much since the first albums, we started with a thrash/death metal arriving to “Human Deception” which is full of orchestra, electronics and so on. We always felt the desire to experiment album by album putting new elements at every step, and especially in the last 3 albums we developed more and more the electronic parts in our songs, because we wanted to add some fresh and unsettling ingredients that could make the music different than what came before.

5. As an Italian band in the thrash metal scene, what challenges have you faced, and how has the Italian metal scene shaped your sound?

Italy is not the best place where to play thrash/death metal, it’s an underground scene with very few exceptions, so it’s not that easy to emerge from the others. That’s the reason why we decided to focus more on touring abroad, because especially after the pandemic era some venues disappeared, making the Italian live scene less rich of stages, but with more and more bands willing to play… Speaking about influences from the Italian metal scene, I think that great bands like Sadist and Extrema could have inspired us in the past, these bands are more related to our sound.

6. Can you walk us through your songwriting process? Do you write collectively or does someone take the lead?

Usually it all starts from a guitar riff or a drums rhytm, then we all work on it jamming in the rehearsals room and speaking about the ideas and the direction that a song should take, this part of the production process of an album it’s always fun and stimulating!

7. Do you prefer smaller, intimate venues or large festival crowds, and why?

I think that are both exciting, i have to agree with who says that in the clubs you can really feel the heat of the crowd on your skin, the persons are closer to us on stage so it’s more physical, on the other hand I love also the festivals because of the big stages (more space while playing!) and also for the crowd, it’s good to play in front of somebody who didn’t know the band and make new friends.

8. What’s the biggest challenge you face as a band when you’re on tour?

It’s been hard when we had to drive ourselves the caravan, we did a couple of tour like that and it’s tiring to play after you drove a lot of hours (sometimes all night long because of the big distances between two gigs) and then you play again and all the circle starts again.

9. Can you tell us about any upcoming music or projects you're working on? Will the Thessaloniki show feature any new, unreleased tracks?

Actually we’re still promoting “Human Deception”, so we haven’t start yet to compose new music, but there will be something more from the past in the setlist, to let know better our music to the Greek crowd!

10. What are you most looking forward to seeing from the audience in Thessaloniki, and how do you hope they will react to your new album 'Human Deception'? Are there any specific connections or emotions you're hoping to share with them through your music?

We’ll do our best on stage to connect the crowd to our music, the best feeling is when you’ve shared all your energies and the crowd notice it by telling it after the show, we want to share our songs and to let it be impressed in the memories of the fans.

11. Thanks for your time. Please close the interview in any way you like…..

Thank you for the opportunity, big hugs to your readers and see you in Thessaloniki!