Methedras have recently finished their latest album System Subversion and are getting ready to unleash it on the world. This is a hard working band who clearly love and believe in what they do, so I decided to get a bit more information from them…
Give us a bit of background to Methedras
Quintessence of the most direct-in-your-face thrash-death style, Methedras sets among the leading underground Italian bands, a real war-machine which has been able to release a demo and three full-length albums during its 18-years old activity, as well as have performed hundreds of concerts throughout Europe, many of them in support of big names of the international metal scene (Testament, Dismember, Hatesphere, Destruction, The Haunted, Onslaught, Exodus, Overkill, Sepultura, Deicide, Hirax and many others), without ever losing an ounce of anger and energy. Quartet formed by Claudio (vocals), Eros (guitar), Andrea (bass) and Daniele (drums), originally near Milan in 1996 with a double-guitar line-up, the band has changed over the years various members preferring in the end a solid line-up with only one guitar, arriving to a proper own style with no compromise: a sort of derived thrash metal spiced with more typical death metal influences and a groove-hardcore approach concerning the vocals.
What are your influences?
I think our influences are everything rock and heavy, ‘cause our background is right that. We love thrash and death metal, of course, but we also do listen from hard rock to grind and brutal, we have no kind of musical prejudice, for example we’re actually attracted by the industrial side of some of the new stuff written…we are in “experimental mode on” right now, and cannot say at the moment where this will end up, for us it’s enough to be free to create, without mental chains. By the way let me say everything that comes from the american bay-area of the early ’80s, being inspired by such big bands like Metallica, Testament, Megadeth, Exodus, Slayer and many others, then we grew year by year opening our minds to a more specific North-European death metal attitude, trying to mix in our sound these two different and typical metal streams.
What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?
I’m currently in love with the killing productions of the German thrash metal heroes Kreator and Destruction, especially “Enemy Of God” and “Violent Revolution” for Kreator, and “The Antichrist” for Destruction. These cds are a brutal assault to the ears of each metalhead, with brilliant productions, and great riffs and solos.
From USA I recently listened a lot of Exodus, Machine Head, Nevermore and Overkill. Especially Machine Head are one of my favourite bands of the last decade, they started their career with an incredible album like “Burn My Eyes”, recently repeated by two CDs like “Through The Ashes Of Empire” and, of course, “The Blackening”, in my opinion the best Thrash Metal album of the latest years, with an incredible production, tons of killer riffs and solos, and a supreme singer like Rob is. I think that “The Blackening” broke with the actual returning of the 80’s thrash metal, it is a modern way to see this kind of music, with some new ideas that brings a breath of fresh air. The same that Nevermore has done until few years ago, with their personal vision.
However, I usually listen to a lot of other genres, in death metal I loved so much the reunion’s album of Carcass, all the recent production of Cynic (but it’s hard to define “Death Metal” their last albums, I think it’s better to say “Prog Metal”) and many other bands.
What are your opinions on the current state of the Thrash Metal in 2014?
In the latest years, Thrash Metal is having a new life, with numerous band that resurrected the glories of the 80’s, with modern sound and most of all brighter productions, in some case also new ideas which carried the genre into new territories.
For example the Italian scene is healthy and continuously growing, despite the very few occasions where to show up and the total lack of a more professional approach by the music system. There are tons of very good bands worthy to be discovered and listened to, but interests from media, promoters, venues and labels pretty always focus on the usual four old big names.
They’ll never get the chance to arrive to a bigger audience if this kind of situation keeps on going, we’d need the help from everyone involved in the underground in order to let these bands grow and become more-exposed, we all should finally act as a whole family, not only when it’s time to fest and hang out!
What did you want to achieve with your new release?
Ten years ago we imagined Methedras still on the road betting to gain a place on stage just a step behind heavy metal legends like Testament, Overkill, Exodus, Destruction, Entombed, Dismember, The Haunted, Onslaught and many others.. well, we won that bet ‘cause we really did it, and all of them teached us the real meaning of the music we love: blood, sweat and passion, ever! We learned that lesson (in violence ahahah) and we kept it as a way of life, everyday, on and off the stage…so, openly speaking, with the new release we’d love to imagine the same thing but at an even bigger level.
Are you happy with how it turned out?
Oh yes definitely satisfied man. We believe to have reached a milestone in our career with System Subversion, achieving the long-time target to build up a delicious platter full of tastes and well-balanced. We have to infinitely thank our dudes at Domination Studio (RSM) for this, in the persons of Simone Mularoni and Simone Bertozzi, who followed all the sound tuning, recording, engineering, mixing, mastering and producing processes leading to a final great outcome such the album you’ve listened to.
Talk to us about the lyrics
The lyrics are all written by Claudio, the singer, and are mainly about experiences he directly lives on his own skin everyday. So we can consider ’em a kind of belief-extensions directly coming from his mind, outlining how he’s used to analyse such political, cultural and lifetime subjects, viewed through his eyes and deformed by his apparent pessimism and nihilism, which instead lead to, if focused to a deeper level, an unwavering and immovable faith in the humankind and his capacity to always resurrect from his foundation, no matter how bad have been his actions, like a phoenix who recursively arises from its own ashes after being dead.
Tell us about the themes behind the album
The new songs are literally more aggressive, faster and well-balanced, rather than our past stuff, offering to the listeners a varied mix of modern heavy thrash-core, spiced with the usual band-trademark death influences, which gave to the music something darker and groovier. Let me say we believe to have been able to put together ten real killer songs which are gonna blow out your mind!
How do you go about writing your songs?
Usually the songwriting process starts with the guitar player breaking through with a killer riff, then the drummer and bass player follow building under a bone-saw drumming and some harsh bass-lines and finally the singer finishing spitting over all the shit of the world, simply telling the truth, the best thing to do the most of the times.
How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?
Well at the moment is too much early to analyse any kind of further development, the new album is still in a pre-release step, and has been kickstarted literally few days ago, so the time spent has been really too short in order to reply to this question…what I can say is that a couple of reviews already arrived and they seem to be very optimistic and enthusiastic. The most part, pretty everyone, of media and music biz related people in Italy who have had the possibility to listen to it, tell this is our best album, with killing, fast and very exciting songs in the name and spirit of the best thrash-death metal around…so let’s see what kind of feedback we’ll first receive with this one before to start thinking about a new path for the band 😉
What can we expect from the future of Methedras?
Of course releasing System Subversion worldwide, hopefully under some good label, trying to catch the more attention possible as we believe this new album deserve a serious hype around, it’s really well-done, aggressive and brutally melodic, if you’re a fan of thrash-death-speed metal, then you should definitely diggin into it…moreover we’ll be soon engaged in a couple of imminent summer fests to officially present the new songs, at Metal Crowd in Belarus on the 16th of August, headlined by Hate, and at Malta Death Fest in Malta on the 6th of September with our bros Hour Of Penance headlining…and finally during the next fall, we should take also part to the “Sentencing Europe Tour”, supposed to happen end of November and beginning of December, and directly supporting the mighty US thrash-death maniacs Solstice from Florida, for the first time appearing in Europe. So the imminent future seems to be great for us and we’ll try to our best as usual!
Thanks so much for this interview and your time to read it, we hope to see you all at our next live events truly supporting what is the most important thing: the real metal attitude.. we exist because of you, thank to all of you out there!!
Thanks!
Website: http://www.methedras.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/methedrasthrash
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/methedrasthrash
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/methedrasthrash
Reverbnation: http://www.reverbnation.com/methedras
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/methedrasthrash
LastFM: http://www.last.fm/music/methedras
Soundcloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/methedras
Deezer: http://www.deezer.com/profile/32232261
Spotify: http://play.spotify.com/artist/7gRx2htny4NtVY3JIEWQRr
Band email: contact@methedras.com
Management: jon@theflamingarts.eu
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