Methadone Skies – Retrofuture Caveman (Review)

I read the bio of bands with a lot of interest, especially during the global pandemic. This issue bothers every one of us in different ways. Some bands stopped being productive, other bands produce a lot of new stuff or try something new in new ways. Methadone Skies are not wasting any time and produced a new album after the 2019 release Different Layers of Fear.

The first song “Retrofuture Caveman” is a 17 minutes (!!!) long monster going by the same name. A gently start from the four man band with a steady progression introduces the listener to the album. A soulful usage of the instruments is a nice interaction. After the first break, the band starts adding harder riffs which I liked pretty much. In the middle of the song the sound changes drastically into a kind of darker psychedelic tone which accompanies the listener until the end of the song.

“Infected by Friendship” starts off kind of like the opener. A gentle start while new sounds are added to the sounds of the song. However, compared to the previous song, this one enters the harder elements faster. The more exotic, with more psychedelic elements, song “The Enabler” has more striking riffs compared to the other two. Especially fans of Psychedelic Rock should listen to this song, maybe they will find some alternation from their usual kind of songs.

With “Western Luv ‘67” we are falling back into a more gentle way to introduce a song. The name is no coincidence, you can feel western elements on the song, after 4 minutes you get a harder bass and drum line which gets covered with smooth riff elements that will urge your shoulders to dance. After this point, some elements from “Retrofuture Caveman” are coming back which are getting mixed with the elements of this song that slides further and further into elements of Doom.

The end of the album with “When the Sleeper Awakens” is well chosen, because it blends the positive elements, even light elements of synthwave kind of sounds that harmonised pretty well with the harder tones of the song. The last minutes of the song and the album gently leads us out of the album again, but not without some harder riffs as waving hands.

What stays after this album about the experience with it? Its kind of complicated. If you want to listen to one specific song, then go ahead with the first song “Retrofuture Caveman” or “When the Sleeper Awakens”. I cannot deny that Methadone Skies have a lot of skills that they try to show us on this album. Sometimes I had the feeling it was too much or too long. Some parts sounded unnecessarily prolonged while I would have liked to hear more about other parts. What they achieve most is to form a picture in your head while you are listening to it and that is a point a lot of bands or albums fail. Even though the album’s repetition rules out a higher rating for me, I still must acknowledge Methadone Skies‘ courage to have tried things here that have often worked out well.

8/10