Megatheria's Post-Metal Instrumental Music Speaks Volumes

Update: The Megatheria show scheduled for August 24 at HQ has been canceled because of a flood at the venue.

The universality of music and its inherent power to communicate moods and messages is something that transcends language, says Megatheria guitarist Marc Christoforidis. It especially defies any lyrics that anyone could ever come up with.

“I think music is just so much stronger than language. It’s not even close,” he says, adding that as soon as “you assign more defined meaning to whatever the words or lyrics are, it just really narrows it down. And music is just so much more powerful and diverse than that.”

Christoforidis, bassist Matt Funk and drummer David Hindman have taken that sentiment to heart and put it into practice since forming their new instrumental post-metal band in May 2023. When the bandmates first met, they wrote two of the five songs that would eventually become Megatheria's debut album, Gateway, which the group recorded and officially released less than two weeks later, on May 26.

“It was like divine intervention, man. The muses took over. There were different sections and breaks and tempo changes and heavy and soft and all these things. Nobody was using any words. This was all just happening intuitively,” Funk explains, adding that the group didn’t even need to change anything when it came to laying down Gateway.

“It was so good the first time,” he continues. “Honestly, I’ve never experienced anything like that.”

Neither had Christoforidis, who moved to Denver from Brooklyn in October 2021 after learning more about the Mile High City’s eclectic metal community and such bands as Dreadnought.

“It all just fell right out of our bodies,” he says of the natural connection Megatheria immediately discovered. “The moods just come out easily. There’s a very special chemistry with this group.”

Armed with those first five songs, Megatheria regularly plays Gateway in its entirety and is embarking on its first out-of-state mini-tour this month, which was supposed to end with a headlining show at HQ on August 24, with Electric Condor and Wiseman & the Wicked Ones also on the bill — but a flood at the venue cancelled that gig.

But these musicians let their music speak for them; they aren't big on chatter in a l ive setting. “We actually have a designated spot where Matt says thank you, and that’s it,” Christoforidis says.

“What we do, and I’m very proud of this, is there’s always something going” with the help of loop or sustain pedals, Funk adds.

Given that mindset, Gateway is as comprehensive as an album gets. Think Sleep’s 1999 album Jerusalem (also released under the more well-known title Dopesmoker in 2003), which has been presented as both one uncut piece and shorter tracks that seamlessly flow so well into each other it’s hard not to listen to it as an hour-plus-long song. It really depends on how you like to indulge in the band’s stoner-doom music.

Megatheria did include a five-song track list for Gateway, but once it starts, there are no distinctive or definitive breaks between each offering, making for a listening experience that’s more of an auditory journey into a time and space full of ethereal elements and sonic twists and turns. “Hibernation” is by far the band’s magnum opus, clocking in at just over ten minutes. Starting off soft, the tranquil music builds to a distorted crescendo during the second half before leading into “Memorial,” the album’s hard-driving, desert-rock-infused finale.

But without any words, everything is open to interpretation, and in that sense, “there’s no language barrier with Megatheria,” Funk says.

“We have people interpret the songs like, ‘When I hear it, I think of outer space or the Pacific Northwest or a primitive prehistoric landscape.’ It’s like, ‘But there’s no words.’ We’re invoking these images in their minds without any kind of provocation,” he adds. “I’ve also kind of prided myself on the universality or ubiquitousness of not having any lyrics. … Anybody can listen to it anywhere. Any alien can listen to it and hopefully enjoy it.”

In 2023, that’s not just far-out hyperbole, and the hypnotic effect of Megatheria’s music seems to be universal, no matter what life form it reaches.

“We see it a lot,” Christoforidis says, particularly from the stage. “We’ve seen totally unsuspecting people who were not there for us or music in general who really get mesmerized by the nature of the music and, I think, the slow, majestic, living-thing quality of it all.”

That makes some sense, since the band's name is a reference to an extinct giant sloth that regularly grew up to sixteen feet in length. Vocalists might as well be lost to history, too, as Megatheria has no plans to team up with a lead singer or dabble in writing lyrics anytime soon.

“Because we don’t have to put up with a singer, we can just focus on writing very strong music that’s very melodic and ethereal and mood-driven,” Funk explains. “I feel like that’s equally as evocative as having a really good singer.”

The music "is already communicating,” Christoforidis adds. “I think there’s a lot of blind obligation to include vocals for the sake of it, because it’s expected in a lot of heavy music. I love to help dismantle that.”