For all the love they’ve received in local punk, hardcore, and noise-rock circles, MTN ISL remain a band deserving of wider attention and acclaim. The group’s 2013 debut EP, God Become Animal, was a welcome surprise, a torrid collection of white-knuckle ragers boiling over with discordant riffs and caustic vocals. Since then, the band’s become a fixture on the Atlanta music scene, playing out consistently and winning fans over with their mix of mathy precision and ragged rage.
On Wednesday, the group released an unmastered version of “Spider Relations,” the first single to be revealed off their upcoming, yet-to-be-titled full length. The track is a wiry thriller that takes everything that was great about their EP—the tightly-wound rhythms and lacerating grooves, the angular guitars and scream-sung vocals—and compresses them into something equally fierce, but more compact and nuanced. It’s the sound of a band grown comfortable—but not complacent—in their own skin and firing on all cylinders. According to guitarist/vocalist Gene Leath, it’s also exactly the kind of nervy racket the band has been trying to create since they first formed.
“It’s a really good representation of the natural transition we have taken through the years,” Leath says. “Refined simplicity. When people ask me how we write such odd songs I tell them it’s completely natural. This is how music comes out of each of us. We have a understanding of what we’re each thinking without having to say it. I suppose that’s what happens when you grow up with each other, play in many bands together with many different styles or whatever and genuinely enjoy each other’s company… I chose ‘Spider Relations’ to share first because when we finished writing it we really felt like it was the first song we wrote that encapsulated what we see as the ‘MTN ISL sound.'”
Listen below.
More Info
Bandcamp: mtnisl.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @MTNISL
SoundCloud: @mtnisl
Twitter: @MTN_ISL