Konzert / Post-punk & World Music Mock Media

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Mock Media II, which is out on Meat Machine Nov 17th 2023, captures this firebrand four piece’s head-on plunge into enthralling existential contradictions: songs that explore the darkest corners of humanity, yet come out at the other end with the unwavering joy that marked their genesis. It’s an album of sneaky eclecticism: the high-wired punk rock stylings serve as Mock Media’s framework to clad their agog explorations into pop, electronic and world folk music.

Mock Media, Canada’s new supergroup, contains members: Evan Aasen, Garnet Aronyk Muhammad, Austin Boylan and Bennett Smith. The band originates in Vernon, British Columbia, a small farming town surrounded by blue lakes and majestic mountain ranges. Such wholesome beginnings naturally sparked a heady wanderlust and DIY-spirit within its founding members.

Don’t expect any melodic kind of punk rock. This is rather a hybrid between fierce hardcore and distorted noise rock. We think of early Hüsker Dü, at times of Dead Kennedys, with an overall sense of nineties AmRep noise rock. The album has been recorded live in the band’s rehearsal space, with the vocals recorded later, giving the ten songs a sense of urgency you rarely encounter these days. Apart from a few tracks, like Rohypnol and the five minute long Wound Care, where the band indulges in slower, more hypnotic riffs, we get fierce noise punk attacks that make you wish to catch the band in a live setting.

Some of the musicians have already played in a couple of metal bands before, most notably vocalist Nicholas who used to front Luxembourg’s only doom metal band Plaguewielder. Whereas that band exceled in epic tracks surpassing the ten-minute border, GOFAI feel more at ease with concise two-minute pieces.

If the word punk means Green Day of The Offspring for you, you might be in for a surprise. It’s rare to come across a new band, especially one without hardly any web presence, that will grab your attention so vividly like GOFAI. Keep your eyes and ears open for them, because with a little more publicity, they might grow quite the fanbase. It’s good to know that Luxembourg still has its share of great new bands.

For fans of:

Crack Cloud, Pottery, Vampire Weekend