Getting to Know… Mothflesh | Interview 🎤

On the 234^th interview in our Getting to Know…series, we get the scoop on the Malaysian ‘Groove-Core’ band, Mothflesh.  

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hat makes us unique is the fact that we constantly blend different sub-genres of metal into our compositions.” Hey, it works for me, 🎙 Mothflesh.  The Malaysian band elaborates about their brand of metal music, describing their style as ‘Groove-Core’ (groove/death metal + metalcore).  On our 234^th interview in our Getting to Know… series, the band provides incredible insight into their craft, truly selling themselves like champs 💪.  So, without further ado, check out this fantastic interview for yourself! We proudly unveil 🎤 Getting to Know… Mothflesh: Interview No. 234!

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Starting things off, for those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes Mothflesh distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

🎤 Hello everyone, we are Mothflesh, hailing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. What makes us unique is the fact that we constantly blend different sub-genres of Metal into our compositions. So that our listeners can taste a bit of everything. It was only last year, that we decided to label ourselves under the Metalcore banner, but our fans (in particular, for this album) still refer to us as a Groove/Death Metal band. We just consolidate that as Groove-Core!

We are known here as being a no-holds-barred live act. In fact, we have gotten a lot of people coming to us and saying that they prefer watching us live as opposed to listening to us on Spotify and anything in that vein. We have always taken the initiative to put on powerful and highly energetic performances. Full of sweat, emotions, and crazy antics. Quote on quote, from one of our past audiences, “watching Mothflesh is not just an incredible auditory experience, but a beautiful visual and emotional experience as well.” We MIGHT have exaggerated his words here, but you’ll never know 😉. Come watch us play and judge for yourselves haha.

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Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did Mothflesh form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had early on?

🎤 Well, long story short, the band started off when 🎙 Imran (vocalist) met 🎙 Eze (bassist) on an almost obsolete Music Forum. One thing led to another, we managed to round up 3 more individuals that made up our first official line-up back in January 2018. Our vision early on was just to create. Create as much as possible and play shows every week. We were a band of driven individuals, so we did not really stop doing live shows until when the pandemic hit. We went on our first Southeast Asian Tour just shy of our first year as a band back in 2019.

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Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

🎤 To get worldwide recognition and play at some of the most famous metal festivals in the world like Wacken Open Air, Bloodstock Open Air, Hammersonic Festival, and many more. Making a bit of money out of it would not hurt either 😉.

The perspectives haven’t changed much, we are still gunning to achieve above and beyond what is expected of us as a small band from a small country in Asia. However, the past years have made it seem more possible and achievable. We wouldn’t have imagined getting our songs played in Canada, the U.S, China, Indonesia, a couple of years back. But that has become a reality. So, we are excited to actually see how far we can go now, especially with the experience and capabilities we have harvested over the years.

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Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

🎤 Each of the band members has our own distinct influences that have, to some extent, perpetuated our love, passion, and interest in pursuing music, particularly metal music. Here are some of our individual influences:

Eze: (for this album) Antonio Vivaldi, Deftones, Carbomb
Maddog: Arch Enemy; Gojira; Necrophagist
Imran: Corey Taylor, Angela Gossow, Lajon Witherspoon, M Shadows

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 Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.  

🎤 Well, we are definitely not short of wacky tour stories hahaha. Let’s see, of the thousands of craziest moments we had on tour, if we were to name a few it will definitely be during our Thailand Tour back in February 2020. Just 1 month short before the Covid Pandemic hit and the whole world went to quarantine. This was our first international show with our guitarist, Maddog, who had just joined the band. So, we were feeling really good about the whole thing. Guess what, we started off the tour by missing our flight to Bangkok! Yup, we literally missed the flight. Imran and Maddog even reached the boarding gate, which was closed seconds before we got there. Our plea to the airline staff was not entertained, at all hahahaha. The good thing was that we planned to arrive a day before our show, but the bad thing was that it was an EXPENSIVE lesson learned, hahaha. We had to purchase new tickets on the spot. But the wackiness of the whole thing did not end there. Our show in Bangkok was tainted by a mall shooting case that happened not too far off from our venue. Some whack job decided to shoot random mallgoers and it just so happened during the day of our performance in Bangkok too. The local authority warned everyone there to stay at home in case this whack job decided to shoot people on the streets. But hey, we have spent a lot of money to come to Bangkok to not play a show hahaha. So, we carried on anyway.

The next day, we had a show in Chiang Mai. The train ride took about 12 hours (the initial estimation was only 8 hours). It was hot, uncomfortable, and we definitely did not get enough rest. When we eventually arrived in Chiang Mai, it was almost go-time. The organizers have been nuzzling our phones non-stop to check where the hell we were hahaha. Stressful is an understatement and when we got to the venue, we were told that we might not get to play because it was closing to curfew time. But with a much-needed stroke of luck, the organizers managed to strike a deal with the local authorities, and we got on. It was one of the best shows we have ever played! A crazy night to end our crazy Thailand Tour. 

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Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

🎤 We try to up the ante every time we put out new materials. So of course, the newest songs will always be our most favourite ones because they are improvements of the last ones. To answer your question, we would have to say 🎵 “The Lotus Denial”, which is a song from our latest album, 💿 Machine Eater.

What makes this song special was the fact that it had opened up a lot of opportunities for us upon releasing it. We got airplay from all over the world. We got on local chart shows, we got magazine, newspaper, radio interviews. On top of that, “The Lotus Denial” was completed when the band was left with only three (3) members; our current line-up. So, for all the complications we had gone through, dealing with the uncertainty due to the pandemic, this was a “Fuck it!” moment for sure. We had nothing to lose, so we put all our blood, sweat, and tears into this song and release it with a music video. Lo and behold, it was a hit! Our most successful song to date. We are eternally grateful for that.

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Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

🎤 Nothing out of the ordinary hahaha. But if there’s an award for most dramatic band, we are definitely in the top 5. If someone would’ve documented our last 2 years as a band, it could compete with Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster, hahaha. IF we ever get that famous. So, we can say that over those couple of years, we have developed an efficient system to manage band crisis. We have lesser fights now, so we would like to think that the system is working haha. If any band out there needs a blueprint on crisis management, feel free to contact us. We can give consultations at a decent price 😉.

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Closing things out, what is Mothflesh currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.   

🎤 Right now, we are focusing on marketing our album first. We are planning to push it out to as many mediums, platforms, cities, countries as possible. We will actually be having an album launch party here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the 19^th of February 2022. Venue’s booked, line-ups are ready, it is going to be sick!

Once that is done, we are planning to release three (3) new singles in 2022. All the songs will be stand-alone singles. We basically would want to experiment with (lower) dropped tunings and combining a different mix of genres in our music as well. Should be fun, haha.

Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

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🎤 Getting to Know… Mothflesh: Interview No. 234 [📷: Mothflesh, Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype]

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