Mosura got its start in March of 2013 with founding members vocalist Jimmy Mendoza and guitarist Tyler Blalock. The band got its name after the pair’s very first jam session, as they tried to come up with a comparison to their sound. Mendoza commented that “it sounded like a monster,” to which Blalock replied “Mothra.” They decided that the name fit—“music fierce enough to compare to a Godzilla movie monster,” Mendoza mentioned—and it stuck. (The name had to be changed to Mosura later--“after having already printed merch and buying a huge banner,” Mendoza added.)
That summer the pair brought on bassist Jonathan Benitez, and in fall of the same year the band was rounded out with drummer Austin Massingill. Of the four members, only Mendoza and Massingill had had former musical experience—Mendoza as a solo act with his younger brother on drums, and Massingill with The Capulets, Autris, and Sirius.
Mosura’s first single “Shepherd of the Black” was released on the group’s BandCamp page in November 2014, after the band had been at work writing for nearly a year. They recalled that after writing two or three songs they “got used to the whole evil moth kind of thing” and were able to pick up the pace. When asked for inspiration on songwriting, Mendoza commented that his religious mother told him about the Biblical plagues of Egypt, which he thought was “kind of metal.” (“Granted,” he laughed, “now we’re talking about a swarm of moths and not locusts.”) Mendoza’s interest in murderers and dream interpretation also provided more material.
“It’s usually just the conversion of feelings into sound,” he said. “For example, one of our songs titled ‘Limb Splitter’ is quite an angry song. Gets you pumped up and ready to say, fight. The lyrics are told in the point of view as an enraged killer who splits the limbs of his enemies.” He went on to mention a second song “Night Stalker,” which was originally about the infamous killer Jack the Ripper. It was eventually changed, as Mendoza “felt it didn't fit the style of the song… [it’s] about a dream I had; I tried to interpret it as well as I could into lyrics. You'd have to listen to it see. Just the motivation of emotion, and the pure and strong desire to be as metal as it can.”
Their upcoming album The Eighth Plague will be their first, and the band couldn’t be more excited about it. “It’s brutal, it’s heavy, it’s loud,” they said. “Raw, in-your-face dirty.” I asked if they had favorite tracks from the album, but they had a hard time narrowing it down. Blalock was unable to pick, as he loved all of them. Benitez deliberated for a moment before deciding that his top two were “Surgical Manifesto” and “Limb Splitter.” Massingill mentioned the title track “The Eighth Plague” as well as “Final Solution.” Mendoza said that his favorite was “Shepherd of the Black,” adding that “[it] has an evil sound that keeps me drawn.”
Mosura announced on their Facebook page recently that The Eighth Plague would be released with several different versions, each with its own exclusive artwork. The reasoning behind this was “a little interesting,” in the band’s own words. The album had, originally, been planned to have only five tracks, and so Mendoza had come up with the artwork for the album and the CD. Shortly thereafter, a few more songs were written, and “it’d be a shame” not to include them, so the covers had to be reprinted. Time had passed, however, and Mendoza had since created new, better artwork, so the artwork was changed. This happened several times with the addition of more and more songs, and eventually the band stopped printing variants. “Eventually we're going to mass produce the albums with one single album cover and design on the disk,” he said. “I’m sure the people that get the album will choose the one with their favorite art cover on it [anyway].”
A release date for The Eighth Plague hasn’t quite been decided yet, though they assured us that they’re hoping to release it sometime in the spring. They also hope to take pre-orders for the album, though they admit they aren’t entirely sure how they’ll handle it yet. “I suppose we'll create a link online,” Mendoza said. “Then again, there isn’t a problem with [people] calling me [or] one of my guys up to ask [to] hold onto an album for them. [Especially] when there are 5 of each design.”
Mosura assured us that they also hoped to tour in support of the album, starting with a release show in which they have merchandise available. “Now that it’s out there,” they added, “we are talking with another band named Edge Of The Earth. Our drummer [Massingill] performed a show with them and it was killer. So we want to keep that momentum going between us.”
When asked for any concluding remarks, Mosura answered:
“Thank you so much for having this interview. We're happy to have some people look into our stuff! Check out our album. It will destroy you.”
Mosura can be found on the following sites:
Original article taken from MACON METAL February 2015.
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