Like the reveries caught up in the dappled light of a sunset, Moodring aren’t just challenging to observe – there’s every chance you’ll blow a gasket trying to do so. That’s the problem with the ‘unprecedented’, our feeble human brains try to cram it into the scaffold of what’s come before it at the expense of thorough observation – often in spite of it. And so when we use the same colour-by-numbers palate we use for most bands to fill in the blanks of the Florida outfit, it doesn’t quiet work.
As BLUNT would learn speaking to frontman and creative firebrand Hunter Young, that was the plan all along. It was something that he had to come to terms with himself, he admits.
“We’re not going to be just this one genre of band. There’s a thousand bands like that in every genre, really. So, if we shed that and did whatever the fuck we wanted, we could do whatever type of touring we wanted to do as well. For instance, we could go and play softer songs and tour with rock bands. Or if we’re on tour and the headlining band is a metalcore band, we can still be as heavy as that band. Or we can never get heavy at all. So it’s really nice. We can get as pretty and as ugly as we want, and I think that’s cool.”
Throughout their EP Showmetherealyou, reissued to coincide with their signing to King- and Queen-makers UNFD, listeners will hear woozy rock jams, scrappy nu-metal cuts, soaring clean vocals and guttural growls duelling in a post-hardcore fashion before snapping back to a solid metalcore groove. It’s not messy or confused, though – it’s deliberate and concise. Moodring aren’t as concerned with genre as they are invoking feelings.
“We’re not afraid of someone being like, ‘Oh, that’s fucking metalcore,’ or, ‘This is butt-rock,’ or ‘This is that,’ or, ‘This is this.’ It’s like, ‘Cool. I’m glad you think so.'”
“A lot of it is relatable in the sense that it can be flipped any way you want it to be…”
Instead, the band employ different metrics for their output.
“If it’s going to be beautiful, make it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard,” Young declares. “If it’s going to be a rock song, make it a rock song. Don’t flirt with being a rock band, just be a fucking rock band. And if it’s going to be heavy, send it all the way. Instead of getting your feet wet in small little pools, just dive in.”
Exhibit A of this modus operandi is ‘Empty Me Out’, a new single added to the EP to mark the reissue. Falling closer to the heavier side of the Moodring spectrum, the track was designed to be a marking point between what they’ve done in the past and what they’re doing now. It also contains a story inspired by Anime hallmark Fullmetal Alchemist, Young explains.
“I had just been watching it again for the third or fourth time. And there was this character, Gluttony, who just literally eats people, but it’s just never enough – this unsatisfiable hunger, which is very cool. We got the video out of that as well. We look like e-boy vampires. So I was like, ‘Fuck it. Let’s rip The Lost Boys.’ If you watch the video for ‘Empty Me Out’, it’s literally just The Lost Boys. It’s funny because a lot of people don’t know this yet, but that… The blood in the glass in that video is just coloured almond milk.”
Rather than simply being a tip of the hat to the iconic series, Young explains that Moodring used the pop culture moment as a vehicle to exhume deeper truths, indicating an even more nuanced and cerebral approach to their storytelling going forward.
“‘Empty Me Out’ is [about] just not ever being good enough for something, or even not even having enough of something. And then on the flipside, having too much of something. You’ve just had so much of it and you’re fed up with it. A lot of it is relatable in the sense that it can be flipped any way you want it to be. It’s definitely left up for interpretation.”
Indeed, as we certainly can’t get enough of Moodring.
Showmetherealyou is out now via UNFD
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