You know, in the past, we’ve been asked to vacate premises by city officials on behalf of Mold!. It was no picnic. Of course, that was a strain of black mold that was very common in Oregon. Today, we’re a lot more excited to be talking about the band.
Mold! is a Miami based noise-punk outfit that keeps things accessible and psychedelic without ever giving you what you’d expect from either of those words – opening banger “Choose to be Controlled!” rolls through with galloping speed and chunky, sparkly guitars in subtly complex arrangements.
Oh, and the band also features drummer good friend of the blog Francisco Lujan, who plays for Pavlov’s Bell and Makoto. Actually, we met him while he was playing percussion for Zeta. So yeah, the guy can play the drums – but no matter what the band’s pedigree might be, you should be able to easily appreciate it for what it is.
Check out the song and music video for “Choose to be Controlled!” below.
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The band even shakes things up with some bilingual lyrics, which, as ignorant as it probably sounds, we found really cool as listeners, because half of the band’s post-punk aesthetic reminds us of the frothy, barely contained At The Drive-In sound. It doesn’t come across as an homage or reference point to them or any of their associated projects, just an observation that will likely bring a lot of pleasure to first time listeners that are also into post-hardcore.
The other half of the band’s noisy leanings border on the garage-friendly style of experimental punks The Armed, whirr, and Angeldu$t, filling earholes with undeniable good times amidst the swirling distortion and buzzsaw synthesizers. But Mold! carve a fuzzy, neon-soaked niche all their own here, deftly taking from some radical influences and pushing joy itself into spaces you wouldn’t expect, and that’s a sentiment we’ll take anywhere we can get it.
This was an unexpected morale boost for sure, at least for us! Hopefully the Mold! gets to you too. Check out more from the band here, and spike our coffee with some moldy stuff here sometime. You know, like mushroom coffee, that’s a thing we see on Instagram now. Anyway, coming up we got The Pieces of Shit, Be Nothing, Varya, and more.