Messier 13 Interview

Hailing from a place of raw emotion and introspection, Messier 13’s recently released debut album Stay for a While captures the weight of routine, uncertainty, and quiet despair. In this conversation with Sound Surge, the band dives into the sonic and thematic depths of their music—exploring how their sound evolved from dreamy shoegaze to a heavier, grunge-infused approach. They reflect on lineup changes, signing with Inner Ear Records, and the personal and cultural experiences that shaped their record. From Silent Hill 2 references to the feeling of floating over a calm lake at night, Messier 13 paints a world both heavy and ethereal.

Nikolas (Drums, Keyboards-Synths) answers the questions.

•  Your debut album, Stay for a While, carries a deeply introspective tone. If this album were a physical space, what kind of place would it be, and what emotions would it hold?

First of all, we want to thank you for the invitation and the interview. This is quite a nice starting quiestion! In our point of view "Stay For A While" looks like this: a tired and bored person in his small apartment, in a huge town, sometime in the evening, on a monday. He's recently back from work and he's concerned he can't do anything right with his stable and stagnant life. He would like to go out and hang out with friends, but all his friends find themselves under the same situation. He would like to cook but his energy is low, so he might eat a delivery meal again. He might want to get along with his other hobbies, but they all seem like they have no interest at all. So, he just sits on the couch and gazes to the ceiling, procrastinating everything. And this scenery happens every day. This is his everyday life. 

•  Shoegaze is often associated with sonic density and dreamlike textures. How do you approach balancing raw emotion with the signature wall-of-sound aesthetic in your songwriting?

We all listen to many music genres and their derivatives, so that might bring the answer to your question. Shoegaze, especially in it's 90s classic era, is often aligned with dreampop, and this is what brings the ethereal element in it. In our music, the "dreampop" element was vanished after a while to be substituted with the raw energy of grunge, and sometimes slowcore. We love modern shoegaze bands who tend to do the same thing,such as Nothing or Trauma Ray do. We don't tend to follow a specific formula for composing songs, but we'd rather just jam some ideas over and over again, until we find ourselves declaring that "this is it!". We spent many years and much experimentation in order to find a sound we felt complete with, and "Stay For A While" is the firstborn of this direction. The great thing is that it almost happened on it's own, like the natural flow of things do, we did not push ourselves to write music on a specific genre. 

•  Messier 13 has gone through lineup changes and sonic evolution since your demo in 2020. Was there a defining moment or shift that cemented the current sound of the band?

Messier 13 began as an indie-dreampop-shoegaze band with female vocals. We tried more than 3 years to experiment with this direction by changing our lead vocalist up to 3 times. We were never satisfied. The defining moment for the sound change was when Pavlo, our guitarist and backing vocalist by then, decided to move on as the lead vocalist. This was when we started writing songs one after another, and so came our debut some while later. I guess he just needed time to feel confident with it.

•  Signing with the acclaimed Inner Ear Records is a major milestone. How did that collaboration come about, and how has the experience been so far?

The singning with Inner Ear came literally out of the blue for us! "Stay For A While" was ready months before the signing, and we were somekind of desperate of how we were going to release it. We had tried to contact many labels, both from Greece and abroad, but none would answer. We were ready to release it on our own when the e-mail from Inner Ear found us. We made a video call, and they were determined they wanted to release our album, so we didn't think of it too much. Thus far, the experience with them is great. They wanted us and they prove it every time. 

•  One of the standout tracks, James' Sad Song, seems to carry echoes of Silent Hill 2. Can you share the story behind its inception and how that game, or its themes, may have influenced the track?

James' Sad Song is a weird story of a track. It was first conceived and played with no lyrics at all. Then, Pavlo, who is responsible for all the lyrics in the album, decided that he'd want this song to be a tribute to one of the favorite games of his childhood: Silent Hill 2! James Sunderland is the main protagonist of the game, and the track was first called "James Sunderland's Sad Song" but the surname was later ommited due to law reasons. In the game, James is searching for his deceased wife in the haunted town of silent hill. The lyrics are a minimal approach of James feelings when he starts to realise what's going on. I don't want to spoil the story to you, it's a great game and it recently got a very decent remake, so it's still out there for anyone who wants to experience it.

•  The themes of fragility, routine, and mourning resonate deeply in Stay for a While. Were there any specific life experiences or personal moments that directly shaped the album’s lyrical and sonic direction?

The album is actually a depiction of our own lives. All of us belong to the generation of loss in Greece. The generation that learned to expect nothing else but the worse in every incident. We saw the economy crumbling, we were paid extra low salaries, sometimes even for 6/7 days a week, we experienced the rise of fascism once again and we all suffer from some kind of depression because we cannot see any bright future in all this. The impact can be found in almost every lyric on the album. It just felt right to us to express these feelings as a musical conception. It just felt very natural.

•  Your influences include classic shoegaze acts, but your music has developed a distinct identity. If you could describe Messier 13’s sound using a non-musical metaphor—something visual, tactile, or atmospheric—what would it be?

I think that our music would match as a soundtrack for a hypothetical David Lynch film! Otherwise, maybe the feeling would be flying over the surface of a calm lake at night, feeling heavy and soft at the same time. 

•  Looking ahead, what is Messier 13’s vision for the future? Do you see your sound evolving further, or is there a specific artistic or thematic direction you hope to explore?

We have already jammed and made some new tracks and some of them may end up on a sophomore record. The musical direction is not exactly identical with the sound of "Stay For A While", but we would like to keep it as a surprise! Yes, the basic target is to make another album and, in time, never stop making music together. 

Photo credits: Argiris Liosis