INTRODUCING: El Moono
Mental health is, to say the least, an incredibly important topic. While it was often dismissed or ignored in years past, there’s been a renewed focus lately. Brighton-based genrephobes EL MOONO recently released their second EP Temple Corrupted, that dealt explicitly with mental health as well as societal issues and the impact they can have on it; blending the sludgy hardcore and the unpredictable melodicism of bands like SUGAR HORSE and PHOXJAW, ears pricked up across the country and we got in touch with drummer Chris Cartwright to discuss what’s in a name, their aims and how they created something that’s so dear to their hearts.
Stepping back a little though, the first thing we wondered is just where the name EL MOONO comes from. “That’s a hard one,” he muses. “Talking to all three of them [the other band members], they all have different stories. I think they just enjoy the mystery around it!” For him, it relates to something more personal, too. “Whenever I’ve had tough times, I always have a quiet space, just go and drive, and sit on my own. I look over my local area and just look at the moon [and] have a bit of perspective so, it actually resonates with me quite a lot.” In other words, ask four members and get five, all equally valid answers. Right.
Their sound is no easier to pin down, as they’re all influenced by so many different bands. There’s the shared enjoyment of bands like the aforementioned PHOXJAW and SUGAR HORSE, as well as DEFTONES. Take the main riff of Final Execution, the second song on the EP. “You can hear the hardcore breakdown, the really DEFTONES-y verses because we’re all massive fans,” he says. It’s definitely audible, as are the other touchstones mentioned like guitarist Jamie Haas’ love of BEACH BOYS which is, again, shared with Chris. Such a mash of genres could sound messy, but EL MOONO don’t suffer any such issues; a broad range of influences might be there, but they’ve got unity of purpose and vision for not only the EP, but the band itself.
“Personally, it’s just for someone to listen to our music and go, I resonate with that, I’m not the only one who feels like that. Or you know, just someone who can actually listen to us and [it] help them like music’s helped me,” he states on what it is they want to achieve. It’s a simple statement, but one that cuts to the core of Temple Corrupted, which is displayed not only musically and lyrically but in the album artwork and name too. When put to him that it’s not too dissimilar to the idea of the body being a temple, he responds “it’s funny you mention that; we spent months just going through names but we couldn’t reach anything that did it for us. One of my favourite films is Law Abiding Citizen, and there’s a scene in it where Gerard Butler gets brought out of the prison and gets hit by one of the officers. He looks up and goes, I’m going to bring this corrupt temple down on your head. So with that inspiration because we have our temples (here he points at his temples) but it can be a political aspect too, so it fitted the mental health and society aspect of it as well.”
Accidentally extending the metaphor, Temple Corrupted was actually tracked in an old chapel in Chichester; as there were four of them plus Sam Coveney, their producer, they were able to do so under the “rule of six” until a further lockdown forced them apart and for the EP to be mastered remotely, using Zoom to talk to Sam and each other. “We were there for about four days, so we’d record then in the evenings we’d hang out and talk about song names, and stuff like that,” Chris reminisces. While it was an experience he’s very proud of, it’s not one he’s keen to repeat. He openly talks about his diagnosis of depression in his early teens and being on medication that, because he was listening to a lot of DEVIN TOWNSEND at the time – who stopped taking his medication to record STRAPPING YOUNG LAD’s seminal Alien, he also stopped taking in order to “bring everything to the surface”. “I’m glad I did it, but I’ll never do it again”, he explains. His bandmates were thoroughly supportive of him during this time – which he’s grateful for, and he’s incredibly proud of what they achieved together.
As we regularly come back to during the course of our conversation, mental health is central to EL MOONO and the concept of Temple Corrupted. From Requiem, that recounts the struggle of watching a loved one waste away due to illness (a direct nod to Haas’ father being diagnosed with chronic cancer at the start of the pandemic) to White Gold dealing with the legacy of racism, colonialism and the injustices minorities face and Miseria that deals with self-loathing and the staggering figures of those that die by suicide (“according to the WHO [World Health Organisation], over 700,000 people globally commit suicide, suicide is a bigger killer than COVID-19 at the moment and that’s just something that I can’t ignore, man. It’s not in the press. It’s not talked about in the news.”) and what could happen if societal attitudes don’t change. EL MOONO are not only a musically interesting and genrephobic band; they’ve got a critical message that we should all be listening to. And even if it helps just one person to feel seen and understood, that’s all they want.
Temple Corrupted is out now via Lockjaw Records.
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