interview with Methedras

Have any of you played in other bands? Yes, the band’s members are actually playing in other bands (not only metal), for example Daniele, the drummer, is playing in another band called Anticlockwise, a prog-thrash band, and Dani (guitar player) also played in the past in an Hard Rock band called Thunderage. We love to be influenced from different kind of music!

How is it that you started playing music? Basically I started playing my instrument because of my aunt that gifted me a classic guitar at the age of 10, then I started to study in a school and my love for the instrument grew at high levels, so here I am! :)

What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you? The lineup of the band is composed by Tito (singer, 33), Dani (guitars, 28), Andrea (bass, 42) and Daniele (drums, 29).

Have you had other previous members? Yes, the history of the band is full of ex members, like one of the two founder (the other one is Andrea the bass player), called Massi who was also the first guitar player, and our beloved buddy Carlo, former drummer from 2000 to 2004, who unfortunately passed away… and many other guys (and a girl too) that played in the band during the past 20 years!

Did you make music even when you were young? Well, when I was young I used to play basically covers of my favourite bands, like for example Metallica, Iron Maiden, and many more… 

Where are you from? We came from the north of Italy, based on different cities like Milan, Bergamo and Brescia. 

What year did the band form? The band was founded back in 1996, so this year is 21 years old, a really long ride!

What's your style of genre? Our band is playing Thrash-Death metal , with modern and electronic influences.

What inspires you? When I’m composing, I simply follow my feelings, my insights, to track down something good in the style of the band (and often adding something different) with a common sense of a song. 

How often and where do you rehearse? Actually we’re doing rehearsals in a place close to Bergamo, usually one time per week. But when we gonna tour, we usually do more rehearsals, just to set everything in the proper way. 

How have you developed since you started with the music? Oh well 20 years are a very long ride and all of us developed a lot since then both as musicians and friends, growing older and keeping strong relationship each other.

Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Actually all the band’s members have also a “daily” work, just because for now we can’t live only with our music. 

What made you decide to make this music? Our desire was to merge two of our favorite genres of metal, Thrash and Death, in an original way, trying to insert also other influences that can customize more and more our music. 

What are your songs about? Our songs talk about real things or human behaviors happening everyday in this world, seen through our own eyes which make us feel ‘em in a kind of distorted and morbid way, like we all were about to give it up to God or the Mother Earth, depending on the personal faith, like we were close to the doomsday or Armageddon, thus spreading an inner and evilish feeling from our songs’ lyrics.

 Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? Usually the first idea about a song came from Dani, the guitar player, then we start to jam on it during rehearsals, adding drums, bass, vocals and lyrics (these ones are completely composed and written by Tito the singer). 

Do you start with the music or the lyrics? Usually we start with the music, that is the guide to write and compose lyrics and vocals.

Do you compose in a certain environment? Usually I compose songs by my own, in my flat or in my private rehearsal room (a lot of the last songs came from there), and as a band we always practice it together in our rehearsal room adding other levels and reaching a final stage which we can definitely call as song.

Have you done any covers live? Sure we did our homework in the early days, covering our inspiring heroes such as bands like Metallica, Motorhead, Slayer, Megadeth, Sepultura, Testament, Exodus, and many others, but now we decided to give it up with covers and focus only on our self production.

What language do you sing in? We sing in English, we never experienced to write lyrics in Italian, maybe it could be an idea for the future for something different and more typical. 

 What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? It depends from gigs, usually we have a good fan base all around the world, which we’d like to let grow by extensively touring Europe and America.

What ages are most of your concert attendants? Usually we’re followed by people from 25 to 40 years old, but we saw lots of time during our shows even kids and old men!

Do you have a regular place you play live often? Previously we had a couple of places where to play regularly here in Italy, but now things are different, and for some reasons (for example artistic choices of those venues) now we only accept consistent offers to play live in Italy, because our interests and hopes are mainly focusing on the rest of the world, rather than our own country. 

What was your first gig like? Oh well it was a kind of nightmare ahahah.. it happened in 1997 in a small town near Milan, I can remember the venue was a dismissed Cinema hall where we put up a small stage together with other local bands, sold tickets at school expecting almost nobody to come, instead, with our big surprise, it was pretty packed with more than 200 crowd in front of us, and we were scared like rats without a minimum idea on what to do and how to act on stage, but luckily in the end we managed to do it, definitely falling in love with live music and attitude ;)

What was your latest gig? Well, our latest gig was in Toronto, and it was the last gig of our US and Canada tour, and it was cool!! Good people, awesome support bands, we definitely enjoyed it a lot!

Have you had to cancel a gig? Unfortunately yes, we had troubles with some promoter in the past, for example in Russia, that forced us to cancel the gig, but it’s something that happens very rarely. 

Where have you played live this year? This year has just begun, but we already played in USA & Canada for the first time in our career, we also had a couple of gigs here in Italy. More will come, soon we’ll be able to announce our plans for the rest of this year!!

 When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? We began to sell it pretty immediately after having started to play, I can still remember the first t-shirt ever printed, a black one with our old logo printed in white on the front, an awesome memorabilia at the present days!! Now we’re plenty of shirts and CDs to sell out during our events and even online on our store at www.methedras.com/shop.

Where can people buy your merchandise? As said above, our fans can buy it on our web-store, and of course all the times we’re playing or touring around!! 

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? I think it’s not a big deal for young musicians, because it’s a way to spread their music around the world, and if this people like you, then they can even decide to buy your albums or come to see you live, and actually this is so important, I mean creating a good fan base regularly supporting you, buying your albums and tickets to watch you performing live.

How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? Definitely a lot. Internet has changed everything, bringing both the good and the bad. In fact I think in the nearly future only streaming and digital sales will keep it up, with a slow but progressive end of the physical “old-fashioned” market. 

What do you think of my work? I respect your work because it allows bands to be known by new people, possibly becoming new followers, and also it allows to understand how musicians from different parts of the world are used to think. It’s really important for the worldwide metal scene having kind of these important promotion sources and tools.

How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? It’s always good for us to be exposed in countries that we never visited before, definitely it could help us to reach new fans out there, and hopefully one day we’ll be able to come to play in Sweden because you helped Methedras to spread its name.. you know it’s on our check list: visit and possibly play in this wonderful nation, where the extreme music is lived and considered much more rather than other countries!

Do you have any role models or idols? Well we don’t actually, we believe only in ourselves and think the music business model totally changed from the past, now a band needs to act in a social way, has to keep connected with his fans and in order to expose its music needs to tour the most of the time.

Why do you think that they exist? Because people love to see others so they feel safe and in the right direction, but this isn’t always true unfortunately.. as already said before, we strongly believe in a DIY attitude ;)

Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? I like to listen to new bands, to understand what they want to share and communicate with their music, and it’s surely easier to find inspiration in new music, instead of from the past. The old bands are part of our background, something so deep in us, but music needs to grow and always develop into new forms, that’s why it’s easier for me to get inspired by something that is new and actual.

What have been your biggest obstacles? Mainly the country where we live, Italy. Our metal scene is good, but too much fragmented, so it’s not easy to trace common goals. If we add the fact that in Italy the extreme music is always considered an hobby, and not a real job, with all the consequences that this way of thinking brings, I can affirm without any doubt this is the main obstacle for us. 

What advice would you give to other bands or artists? To never surrender in front of anything, if you really want to do something. During a band’s life, there are many negative moments to pass through, you could have to change the lineup one day, can lose friends, but if you have a target in your mind, if you think this is what you really want, do it with no regrets and no doubts.

 How do you get psyched for a gig? Sorry what do you mean for “psyched”?? Prepared to perform or going nuts for other bands performance?! Well in the first case, we like that “being-little-nervous” feeling just before to step on stage, even if we’ve been playing for more than 20 years and did hundreds of live shows in the past, it keeps you alive and “human”, not only a machine used to move its fingers / arms / feet / vocal chords up and down for an hour or about. In the second one, we love to see on stage technical ability, great visuals & lights, and most of all, charisma!!

Do you have any new material? Yep, as I previously wrote, we’re recording a new album right now, it’s the fifth one of our discography, called The Ventriloquist. We have a bunch of new songs which we consider killing ones, something that is in the band’s style, but with a wider inspiration and new elements inside the sound, something that is making this new album so amazing in our opinion. I really hope this same opinion will be shared even by most of the other people who will listen to it in the end, we’re so keen to release it and excited about how the new songs will sound live!!

What are your web sites? You can find any kind of info and link at www.methedras.com or also on the most popular socials like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram simply searching for our name. 

How can people reach you? We love to chat and answer to our fans, so they can definitely use their preferred social in order to get in touch with us.

What are your plans for the future? Of course the release of the new upcoming album, with a new label deeply interested in it, and after this doing some nice promotion and tours abroad, since we love to travel playing.

Do you have something to add? Thank you so much for this interview, we’re always happy to reach new possible listeners, and I really hope to visit Sweden the soonest possible!!

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