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BACKGROUND

Artist Bio: Methadone Skies is an independent psychedelic rock group from Timisoara, Romania. Active since 2009, the instrumental quartet has released 5 full length records so far. Each LP shares its own musical direction, often leaning into stoner, post-rock and doom metal territories. There were never any boundaries set, so each affair is the sum of various influences and constant sonic exploration. Retrofuture Caveman is the latest album, released in May 2021. The LP mainly blends post-rock with stoner alongside doom metal touches. It is perhaps one of the most calibrated and cohesive efforts so far. Although we are not a heavy touring band, we managed to play over 100 gigs in our country and Central-Eastern Europe over the past decade. We shared the stage with multiple bands in the genre such as Yawning Man, Samsara Blues Experiment, Motorpsycho, My Sleeping Karma, Stoned Jesus, Acid Mothers Temple, Toner Low, Stonebride, 1000MODS and Zaum among others.

Genres: Stoner Rock/Psychedelic/Progressive

Band Lineup: Alexandru Wehry (guitar), Raul Stanciu (guitar, E-Bow), Mihai Guta (bass), Flavius Retea (drums, percussion, keyboards)

Website: https://methadoneskies.bandcamp.com

Most Recent Release: Retrofuture Caveman (LP, May 2021)

Sputnik User: insomniac15


INTERVIEW

I caught up with Sputnikmusic staff member Raul Stanciu (insomniac15) about Methadone Skies’ latest LP “Retrofuture Caveman”, touring with the likes of Motorpsycho, and more.

Tell us a little about how Methadone Skies formed. How did the band meet? What is the general vibe like when you are all together?

Three of us were colleagues in high school and decided one day in 2009 we should start playing together. We learned to play our instruments on the go mainly by covering Queens of the Stone Age tracks and a couple of months after, we started jamming to our own rudimentary riffs. The second guitarist, Alex joined a year later. He had previously played in a number of other bands and had more experience overall. We kind of picked up our pace as he led the songwriting.

We are good friends and most of the time just talk crap and make fun of anything possible. It took a while to become this relaxed and inevitably had some arguments in the early years, but I believe this is something anyone in a band can relate to.

 

Methadone Skies currently has five full-length albums to its name. While each record generally resides in the stoner/post-rock/doom metal sphere, you’ve said that “there were never any boundaries set”, and that each LP possesses its own musical direction while existing as the product of “constant sonic exploration.” With all of this in mind, can you give us a brief rundown of how you view each LP’s unique identity? This could be anything from specific techniques implemented to the general mindset of the band while writing/recording.

We never set any sonic boundaries, because all of us listen to different music. What bound us in the beginning were alternative/stoner rock acts. Each album goes in different directions, being influenced by what we were listening to at the time. We started as a stoner/psychedelic rock band and Enter the Void, our first album, sounds closest to mainstays such as Black Sabbath, Earthless or Colour Haze. From there, we slowly reached out in several directions for the next LP. We named it Eclectic Electric because each song had a different vibe. Beside the abovementioned styles, there were some doom metal riffs, post rock outings, as well as a couple of vocal guests.

During 2012-2015 we played more gigs and found that the heavier songs had more impact on the public. We also bought and/or upgraded our gear during that period. So, for the 3rd record, Colosseus, we wanted something immediate and punchy, plus we were listening to a lot of riff-based stuff like Sleep, YOB, Conan, Chevelle, Sasquatch, Wo Fat or Electric Wizard to name a few. In hindsight, we could have pushed more on the production side for that record, mainly regarding overdubs. It has a certain charm though, at least for me.

On our 4th album, Different Layers of Fear we expanded more, working on more intricate progressions (for us) and post rock influences were more prevalent. Nevertheless, we wanted the songs to be immersive and asked a friend of ours to play keyboards on a few songs too. It ended up a mammoth of a record at 72 minutes and we learned about the financial pain of pressing 2LPs from our own pockets.

Regarding the latest record, Retrofuture Caveman, we’ve been talking for years about doing some softer tracks and here we came closest to that. There’s mainly a blend of post rock and doom riffs with prog rock influences. Also, more synths. It’s more or less a continuation of the previous stuff on DLoF. Some people said it’s tame, but what mattered most for us was to continue exploring new sounds and blends to keep things interesting.

 

Your debut album Enter the Void will turn 10 years old this July. Methadone Skies’ Facebook page has been hinting at officially recognizing that milestone. Without divulging too much, what can you tell us about any potentially forthcoming commemoration(s)?

The way we initially handled the release and all promotional related features was like watching a car crash in slow motion. We had no experience, so we just released with almost no publicity on Bandcamp and printed some CDs that were sold at gigs. We didn’t bother much with anything else. Thankfully, in 2012 the market was less saturated with stoner/psychedelic rock and maybe due to being one of the few bands in the genre to come from Romania, we received more interest than anticipated.

We remastered the album in 2020, because the original artwork was lost right after the original release of the album when the laptop containing it suddenly broke down. Plus, we recorded the album live in a garage during one week in August at 40 degrees without metronome tracks backing us. We wanted to make the most of those recordings and have a brand new artwork we can actually use for printing. The only thing left now is to send it to the vinyl pressing plant and wait in line to receive the final product hopefully by the end of the year.

 

Your latest release, Retrofuture Caveman, dropped last May and was well-received across a variety of online music publications. Would you consider it to be your most critically and/or commercially successful album?

The album did better than we expected, because we couldn’t go out and play the usual handful of shows. It was also the first time we had a PR pushing the record, which for us meant a lot. We learned more about the whole process, especially timing and posted more on social media around the release date. Also, shipping copies to a few independent stores helped.

Still, Different Layers of Fear and Enter the Void are the records that garnered the most interest yet. This is mainly because they were uploaded on dedicated Youtube channels and reached 40-50.000 views on a couple of them. The songs were subsequently added by people on several playlists on streaming platforms. Luckily, a fair number of them reached our Bandcamp page too.

 

Retrofuture Caveman is a powerful, gorgeous foray into post-rock and it immediately announces its presence with the stunning 18-minute title track — my personal favorite from the LP. Which songs from Retrofuture Caveman: (1) took you the most time to write, (2) took you the least time to write, and (3) is your personal favorite?

Thank you for the kind words.

The song that took most to write was “Western Luv ‘67”, because we didn’t know for months where to go exactly after the first half. Various ideas were tossed before we settled on the sluggish, Earth-like middle segment and the doom ending. There were a lot of overdubs done in the studio as well, in order to create a rich atmosphere on the first part. We were surprised how nice it all came together.

The shortest one to write was “The Enabler”, I just wanted a song where I could play the same riff for minutes on end and have a hypnotic feel. I was listening to a lot of Swans (and still am) and wanted to go further down that path, but not everyone felt it was the right move for us.

My personal favorite is “Infected by Friendship” mostly due of its soothing sound and nice flow. I don’t usually listen to our own music in my spare time, but I return to this song from time to time.


 

Prior to this interview, you told me that despite not being a “heavy touring band”, you’ve still managed to play over 100 gigs in your country and elsewhere in central/eastern Europe. You’ve shared stages with the likes of Yawning Man, Samsara Blues Experiment, Motorpsycho, My Sleeping Karma, Stoned Jesus, Acid Mothers Temple, Toner Low, Stonebride, 1000MODS and Zaum. In what ways do you find yourself being influenced by the acts that you tour with? Is there a specific show in your mind/memory that will always stand out (for either good or bad reasons)?

We’re all working full time and try to play live as much as our schedules allow. Our guitarist Alex moved to Hamburg, Germany in 2017 and now lives in Vienna, Austria, so he needs to take more days off to rehearse with us before playing. We were lucky share the stage with multiple amazing bands as they were in the area or at festivals. For example, our drummer loves Motorpsycho, so playing with them was a dream come true for him and made me dig into their discography more. Toner Low (from The Netherlands) were another act that influenced us; they are so heavy live and have such an awe inducing low end, it made us work more on our sound and try harder riffs.

The most memorable, however, was playing with Yawning Man and getting to spend some time with them talking about various subjects, including the Mojave Desert scene and the entire industry behind it now. They are living legends in the stoner/psychedelic rock field and are such nice, humble guys. We are big fans since high school days and even covered “Rock Formations” on one of our first gigs in 2010.

Also, opening for Stoned Jesus in Belgrade was a big thing for us. They had to unfortunately leave early to get to the airport and that left us to play after them to a remaining audience of about 500+ people I think. It was stressful, but thankfully, the people enjoyed our music and ended up as quite a memorable gig.

How has COVID-19 impacted Methadone Skies’ touring schedule in recent years? As some countries begin to cautiously turn the page to a post-pandemic chapter, do you anticipate things ramping up in the near future?

We managed to play only 2 concerts here in Romania since the pandemic officially started, which is sad. Alex couldn’t travel to Romania for many months due to various restrictions and it was harder for us to go to other countries because Romania had the second lowest vaccination rate in the EU. We would have had to stay in quarantines everywhere we wanted to go. Besides that, many clubs and bars have closed indefinitely or became cafés. We sent dozens of mails trying to book gigs, but even at an underground level, there are few free dates due to constant rescheduling. It’s very hard to connect multiple locations these days and we haven’t had the luck to work with a booking agency so far.

Things are slowly getting back to normal in many countries, but a large number of the venues don’t exist anymore. It’s sad to see places you used to play in close down or not organizing gigs in the near future.

Every band has at least one of those “what if we actually did that?” ideas tucked away in their realm of possibilities. What would be an unexpected future avenue for Methadone Skies to take?

Lately, we’ve been listening to a lot of electronic based music, whether synthwave, pop, industrial or other blends. We all bought a synthesizer of some sorts and want to switch things a bit. It would be interesting to “do an Ulver” and shift our sound drastically, but first we have to learn how to play or incorporate them in our music.

 

You’ve been a reliable staff writer at Sputnikmusic for years now, and have been around even longer (since 2007!). Have you discovered any bands here that have had an influence on your craft? What can you tell us about the state of this website in 2007 versus 2022? How has the community changed?

Haha, yes, I basically grew up on Sputnik and has been since probably 2010 my go-to site to discover new music. I found hundreds of bands and artists here and continue to check on a weekly basis stuff I see reviewed or mentioned. Of all the bands that influenced my guitar playing and I found them here are probably Sasquatch, Chevelle, Electric Wizard and Boris. These contributed most to me buying fuzz pedals and cranking my amp as much as possible to play heavy riffs. Also, bands like Lights Out Asia, God Is an Astronaut, Mogwai, Hammock or Ulver got me into diversifying my playing and use tons of delay and reverb. At the same time, Swans had a certain effect as to find that interesting riff, then just be able to repeat it and not become boring.

Regarding the Sputnik community, I’m probably not the right guy to ask as I am not very active and don’t communicate much. I lurk and read a lot of threads and reviews though. Trolling will be eternal of course, but I think there is less flaying for the new, inexperienced reviewers these days.

What I’m sure of is that the current staff/contributors are some of the best the site had from what I read since I joined. I hope they remain active as much as possible. What I didn’t expect though, was the site to look the same 15 years later lol. It’s fine, it would be weird at this point to change all of a sudden.

 

Methadone Skies has garnered more public recognition than a lot of other Sputnik user-led projects. What advice can you offer these lesser-known start-ups to help them get their feet off the ground? Do you have any words for our audience at-large?

Although we are still learning how to get our music to the right audience, I can say it’s very important to be constantly active and present a complete package. Marketing has become different for each genre, you need to decide what you want to do. If you want to play live, use any opportunity to do so, at least in your area. Write mails to any bookers, clubs, labels and someone will eventually say yes. Also, get your music on dedicated Youtube channels and streaming services, this will lead various people to your Bandcamp and social media sites. Print merchandise, EPs/LPs, because in the rock/metal spheres, people still buy physical copies and keeps them connected to you. Find independent shops that have underground music related to your genre and send them copies of your EPs/LPs.

Also, the artwork is more important than it initially seems, especially when browsing online for new music. I often listen to albums solely based on artworks that I find interesting, weird or out of this world. The music business has become corporate even at underground levels (labels and bookers included), so it’s harder to pave your way as an independent band.

A site like Sputnik helps a lot, because there’s a constant flux of new or unknown artists mentioned in lists, comments or reviewed. You can be the most obscure band and randomly find fans from the other side of the world this way.





Sowing
03.14.22
The 8th installation in this series gives us insomniac15's band, the impressive Methadone Skies. Would highly recommend giving them a chance!

insomniac15
03.14.22
Many thanks Sowing for this feature!

Gnocchi
03.14.22
Man, that is some artwork! Reading the intie now.

dedex
03.14.22
Great interview, especially the last question/answer

YoYoMancuso
03.14.22
i've always loved this band name so much

insomniac15
03.14.22
Haha, thanks! Unfortunately, the name turned against us lately in the Zuckerverse, our page doesn't appear when you search the name.

Sunnyvale
03.14.22
Sweet band, sweet interview!

MonumentsOfParalysis
03.15.22
I'll check you guys out! I didn't see it mentioned, but how did the band name come about? I'm particularly interested since I work with medicine

insomniac15
03.16.22
I remember we had an entire list of possible band names and at some point I was listening to Valium Skies from The Verve and randomly coupled it with the Dr. House episode where he gets into methadone. It didn't make any sense, but we were like okay and now we wish we had chosen a better band name haha. I don't think it relates to the type of music we play.

Sowing
03.16.22
I quite like the band name, personally.

insomniac15
03.16.22
Thank you Sowing

parksungjoon
06.22.22
Guţă? Reţea? 😂😂

pizzamachine
06.22.22
Teeheehee Rainbow Stab when

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