What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.

MFRSM are an Israeli Mediterranean post-punk trio, a melting pot of diverse musical influences both local and international.
The band has been active and touring since 2015, being led by Avidan Ezra on guitars and vocals, Yuval Rozin on bass and Omri Elazari on drums. This bond proved vital and natural for shaping and fine-tuning the sound of the band.
Throughout the years the band has not stopped performing live, gathering a dedicated crowd that attends every show around the country.
The band draws directly from the new wave of post-punk that appeared overseas during the second half of the decade.
The new albums reveals MFRSM’s influences that span from classic foundation-layers like The Cure, The Clash and Wire, to post-punk revivers like Preoccupations, Parquet Courts and Protomartyr – While maintaining the middle-eastern influences that adorned their music since the beginning.

Provide us with some info about your latest release…

The unplanned child of the album turned out to be the debut single from “Lie, Lie, Lie”, the sophomore album by Mediterranean Post-Punk band MFRSM.
FAST FACTORS captures one moment in the studio, holding a guitar while working on other tracks, the whole essence of the band’s new album broke loose in an unplanned passionate moment through a raw guitar riff and lyrics that came out instinctively. It tells the story of an impossible relationship, full of passion and sexuality alongside role-playing and
and unfulfilled fantasies.

Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?

Music wise our influences strives from the music we grow up listening to – Classic rock, early post punk classics, folk music, punk and metal bands, to our latest influences , whom really impact the album, bands such as IDLES, Protomartyr, Fontaines D.C
Our non-musical influences will probably be the whole temperament of our surroundings in the past few years, It’s been an hectic, scary, fast paced couple of years for us, and music is our main outlet.

In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?

We believe our sound differ from others first off all because of the fact that we are Israelis, we live in the middle east, which has a huge effect on us.
Musically, we grow up listening and exposed to stuff that other bands don’t get the chance to listen to, such as classical Egyptian music (Umm Kulthum, Abdel Wahab), Iraqi & Arbaic maqams (Nazem al-Ghazali) or music from own each individual heritage (traditional Farsi music, traditional Iraqi music etc…).
We think this unique mix of our love to hard rock and post punk alongside Middle Eastern tunes and energy makes our sound and story stand out.
Secondly the political climate have a big impact on our sound, we are troubled all the time with the local current events and it’s mirrored in our sound.

Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…

Pulp fiction
Disintegration- the cure
Crossroads – The movie with the kid from karate kid

Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?

We prefer performing live, it is mostly what we do, it generated a lot of our sound and the whole musical atmosphere we wanted to create, we always think what will be the most fun song to play live.

Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?

We filmed our whole process of making our new and upcoming album: “Lie, Lie, Lie” and edited it to a 11 episode long vlog, which is hilarious (to us) and we highly recommend watching it on Youtube!
The best part is just us recording backup vocals, Avidan and Omri yelling carelessly while Yuval cracks up laughing.

Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?

I think our most unique track is “lately”, we took a lot of risks and chance making that one, it has a different approach and tempo and the whole around vibe is different, but we just went with our guts even if we felt insecure about it.

Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?

We recently released our first single: “FAST FACTORS” from our new album and we are very excited to see the love it gets!
basically are waiting Covid to settle down so we could tour Europe with our new album that will be released this winter, we hope to be an opening act to our favorite band and musicians, releasing our next singles and music video from the new album and of course to keep making music together.

Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…

Curated by: Christos Doukakis

Recommended listening:

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Connect with MFRSM:

https://www.mfrsm.com/

https://www.instagram.com/mfrsm_band/