9+1 Q&A with Sküma

What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.

First of all thanks for having us, it’s a pretty fun story actually. The first incarnation of the band consisted of five CSD(Computer Science Department of University of Crete) college students. We were hanging around at a concert and we joked around about having a band, Mike said “well I can sing” I said “I play the bass “and we knew we just had to find the missing pieces. So we got Grou to play the drums Gio and Jason on the guitars and that’s how it happened. Since the departure of Jason we have Panos joining us on the guitars. As for the inspiration part, all of us are heavy music listeners so I believe creating was the next step .

Provide us with some info about your latest release…

So at summer of 2018 we got into Groove Studio and recorded the whole album in two sessions. Then, we got Greg Kanados(Grigoris Daramaras) to actually mix and master the songs and Bill Thomou made the artwork for the album and here we are now.The name of the album is Vol.[0] and you can find it at youtube,bandcamp(free for downloading),soundcloud. We are really happy about the result especially considering the circumstances. The album is a good mix of both heavy and more melodic music styles and the feedback we’ve got has already exceeded our expectations and we hope you guys are loving it as much as we do!

Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?

I’d say we don’t really have a specific influence. You can really see that after listening to the album, because it’s just a big mix of different music styles. Everybody likes different stuff and we try to mix everything together. Rage Against The Machine, Tool, Red Fang. Pretty much anything that sounds good!

In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?

When we started the band we wanted to play stoner rock but as time passed by, we realized we really couldn’t accomplish that because we just like a lot of different stuff. If you like a mix of stoner / rock / metal I think you should definitely listen to the album. We don’t stick to a single genre because that just doesn’t suit us at all and we like to feel free when creating new music for us and you guys as well.

Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…

Albums:
Tool-Ænima, Kyuss-Welcome to Sky Valley, Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine

Movies:
Interstellar, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny , Lord Of The Rings

Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?

I mean the obvious answer is live. All the feedback you’re getting from the crowd and you’re getting pumped as well so it’s just a lot of fun! It’s the place where you can really see the fruits of your creations.

Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?

For sure the funniest story would be when we played a gig at Chania. The stage was kind of awkwardly set and I could not see our drummer. There really was no way of communicating and we were pretty smashed so we really had some issues there when we had to end the songs haha. It was just a really fun show and we’re really glad we did it anyways.

Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?

Either Insomnia or Dead Disco are probably the most unique we’ve got. Insomnia on the one hand is a fast paced funky dancing tune that we sometimes compare to Make It Wit Chu of QOTSA and Dead Disco really sounds like a Placebo song. They’re both different in their own ways but people say those two are our hit songs.

Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?

We’re just planning to get even better, compose more songs maybe ‘fix’ some of our older unpublished songs and just play as many live shows as we can. A big goal for us would be to play outside of Crete, we really think that would bring a lot of good publicity to the band and we would definitely enjoy those big crowds!

Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…

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Photo credits: Frank Papadakis

Curated by: Christos Doukakis

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