Hey Mental Friction, welcome to BuzzMusic! We’re singing right along with your single “Show Me Some Love”. The single has a very catchy feel to it, what do you think makes the song so catchy and replay-able?
For us, the chorus is definitely the catchiest part of the song sonically, however, we also believe the story that accompanies the music is what entices the listener to keep listening.
Your single “Show Me Some Love” gives off the hard-hitting rock and passionate vocals. How did Mental Friction begin to create the song, and did you have any intentions with how you wanted the end-product to sound/feel?
It started when Ryan, was playing around with this riff, which is the riff you hear in the intro. It gave off a real classic rock/Latin vibe, that I found very interesting, its’s an area we haven’t really explored in our writing. As we progressed into the writing of the music the chorus melody is what came to me first. I (Christian) was driving to the gym one morning and I was playing the song in my head and started singing OO’s. I thought “Hey that would make an interesting chorus melody”, its something we haven’t tried yet. After writing the lyrics and taking the song as far as we could, we called up a friend of ours, Sal Costa from My Darkest Days to take a listen and throw us his thoughts. He definitely dug the song along with a couple of other tunes so we asked him to produce the new music. We sent the demo to Danny Craig from Default who liked it as well and we flew out to B.C to record the E.P. with him in his studio.
Speaking on your recent single “Show Me Some Love”, the vocals that Mental Friction brings are intoxicating and so passionate. Where did the band find inspiration to write lyrics for a fun-loving song like this?
The inspiration for the lyrics came from a couple of different sources. I (Christian) was watching the Netflix series “Narcos” and it gave me the inspiration to write a story based on the underground drug trade. The tune has this Latin rock vibe which in my mind really worked well with the theme.
We’ve heard that Mental Friction delivers a unique blend of music that intersects with many genres. How has this sound experimentation helped Mental Friction grow and flourish as artists?
Our eclectic tastes in music allow us to explore things we wouldn’t normally explore in our writing. We always aim to write music that doesn’t sound like one specific thing, instead we try to create a sound of our own and stand out from the pack. We have classified ourselves as alternative rock because we draw inspiration from many different artists and genres. Our main source of influence comes from classic rock, but individually we do have different genres that inspire us. Ryan loves the '90s 2000’s rock music and gets inspiration from bands like Oasis, Soundgarden, Foo Fighters, and KOL. I (Christian) draw from country, alternative, and mainstream rock music influences from artists like Eric Church, Luke Combs, Kongos, Coldplay, and Nickelback. Between the two of us we definitely strive to write music that can only be described as Mental Friction.
What can we expect to see next from you throughout 2020?
We did have a solid start in 2020 accompanying Bonds of Mara on some of their cross Canada tour dates, but when COVID hit we moved to do bi-weekly shows on Facebook Live just to keep up our chops and because we love playing for our followers. For the remainder of the year we are hoping to play live dates through the latter half of the summer and into the fall. We also have our EP “Capricorn” coming out with a new video we are hoping to release sometime in September.
Listen to "Show Me Some Love" here.