Blog

For the uninitiated, Mogwai are a post-rock band from Glasgow of three decades’ standing. They’re masters of the genre and are able to switch from moments of vulnerability to sheets of howling feedback at the stomp of a pedal. They’re probably louder than most bands you could care to mention, and to witness them live is something akin to a religious experience.

We’ve got a feeling that some sections of the metal community have them pigeonholed as a band for 6 Music-loving, coffee-nerd soundtrack collectors, and while they’d be partially right, we can’t help but feel some of you are missing out. And their song titles evoke more than a page of lyrics could.

Here, then, are 10 heavy Mogwai songs for metal fans. You lucky, lucky people.

My Father My King (EP, 2001)

A promotional sticker slapped on this 2001 single (if you could call it that) simply read: “two parts serenity and one part death metal”.

With a running time of 20 minutes and 12 seconds, My Father My King was released six months after their 2001 album Rock Action. Based on a Jewish prayer called ‘Avinu Malkeinu’ – translated as ‘Our Father, Our King’ – the song was something the band had been working on for an album by producer Arthur Baker, which never materialised.

After closing their set with the song for several years, the lengthy instrumental was recorded by Steve Albini over four days at London’s Mayfair Studios. It was the only time they would work with him, and guitarist Stuart Braithwaite paid tribute to the producer following his death in 2024.

“He was a very pleasant person to be in a room with,” he told The Guardian. “He didn’t eat anything apart from chocolate Hobnobs for the entire [time] that it took us to record the song – apparently you can’t get them in the US.”

The sticker’s description of the recording was exactly right. It offers moments of delicacy, hard volume, and gargantuan sheets of squall, and ends on a wave of sludgy distortion. It remains an intense highlight of the Scottish post-rockers’ three-decade-long career.

Like Herod (Mogwai Young Team, 1997)

Originally titled Slint, after the Kentucky band of the same name, this instrumental is guitarist Braithwaite’s favourite song on the band’s 1997 debut album. Recorded as a four-piece in Hamilton, the song wasn’t named after the cruel king prone to acts of biblical violence but something far more uneventful instead.

“Like Herod was something someone misheard when they actually meant to say ‘light-headed’,” he explains.

It’s a post rock masterclass of quiet-loud dynamics and is a staple of their set today. Multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns was yet to join the band at this stage but recalls a moment of shock while listening to the studio recording.

“My ex-girlfriend and I, we used to listen to that album, and Like Herod came on and we were just dozing off to sleep, and then the fucking loud bit comes in,” he remembers. “I didn’t have anything to do with that tune, and when we play it live I just love playing it, it’s so much fun. You see all these people in the front row who have obviously never been to a show before and they get such a fright! I mean, it’s just a noise but it’s really fucking funny… it’s almost like a wind-up.”

Should you wish, an even more intense, 18-minute version can also be found on Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996–2003.

Batcat (The Hawk Is Howling, 2008)

Taken from their fantastic album The Hawk is Howling, Batcat is a beast made out of droning riffs, a wall of fuzz, and a particularly hostile performance by drummer Martin Bulloch.

“We haven’t done too many really heavy songs over the years, and this is maybe the best one,” Braithewaite tells The List. “It has a really demented structure and it’s fun to play, it shouldn’t really work but it does. What’s a batcat? I don’t know. People assign their own really profound ideas to our titles, which I really like.”

The video is disturbing, too.

Glasgow Mega-Snake (Mr. Beast, 2006)

“We had this idea to promote Glasgow by genetically modifying a sea-creature and somehow making it into a rollercoaster,” Braithwaite once told this writer. “People will flock to Scotland when it’s made.

“We wrote the song in the hope that we can sell it to Channel 5 when they do The Making of the Mega-Snake programme,” he added. “We’ve got it sewn up.”

Unfortunately, the Glasgow tourism board never pursued this ambitious idea and the programme was never commissioned, which is simply Scotland’s loss.

Song-wise, it’s a dense wall of riffs that attacks your ears – much like what an outsized urban snake would do if it was approached on Sauchiehall Street.

Christmas Steps (Come On Die Young, 1999)

Named after a steep, Grade-II cobbled street in Bristol, this nine-minute instrumental is exactly the sort of song you’d use to illustrate building tension. It begins with a fragile guitar line, which gradually evolves into a staccato riff backed by thunderous drums, before quietly fading out. Their Slint influences are proudly worn on their sleeves here. We wouldn’t be surprised if they wore Spiderland t-shirts in the studio, to be honest.

Old Poisons (Every Country’s Sun, 2017)

Taken from their album Every Country’s Sun, this song began life as a fully fledged electronic demo created by Barry Burns (complete with programmed drums, guitars, and keyboards) which the band then transformed into this woozy, distortion-packed stomper.

“That’s a banger,” Braithwaite told Dazed. “That’s a lot of fun to play. And it’s not too hard for me! I’m not playing a hard bit. I’m not saying I’m some kind of virtuoso, but I can just enjoy the music rather than worry about what my fingers are doing.”

Old Poisons is Mogwai at their most, what’s the thing people say these days? “Aggy”. The song is brooding and bellicose before fading out, only to deliver another round of riffs to your chops.

Sweet Leaf (Do the Rock Boogaloo single, 1998)

In 1999, Mogwai shared a split single with Norfolk indie rockers Magoo, released by Fierce Panda.

The enthusiastic liner notes on this 1998 treat outlined the reasons for featuring two Black Sabbath covers: “The concept is seethingly simple — release two old-school Black Sabbath boogaloos vamooshed by a couple of the swiftiest sonic yooofers around… as we celebrate the darkest riffs, the deepest moods, the longest hair and the richest of foods. Mammoth drums! Massive solos! Huge hairy balls! Yes!”

We’re not sure whose hairy balls they were referring to, but Magoo chose Black Sabbath’s eponymous song from their 1970 debut, while Mogwai picked Sweet Leaf, with Braithwaite performing vocals. It’s loose and performed in the spirit of the original, complete with those hacking coughs.

“I think Black Sabbath are probably the best heavy band of all time,” Braithwaite told The Quietus. “But the thing people forget about Sabbath is that they had a swing. A lot of heavy rock is very rigid and stiff, but Bill Ward and Geezer Butler had this jazz-influenced groove. It’s heavy, but it bounces.”

Ratts of the Capital (Happy Songs for Happy People, 2003)

Making its live debut in Athens, this rodent-themed banger begins with a delicate, hypnotic guitar line. Over the course of eight minutes, it gradually builds into a monolithic wall of feedback, before fading out once more. It’s like being caught at high tide and tossed around in the waves, before being returned to shore. If there were a sound for a moment when there’s not enough time to panic, but you can feel the anxiety trapped in your throat, it would be found here on Happy Songs for Happy People.

We’re No Here (Mr. Beast, 2006)

According to drummer Martin Bulloch, this existential song title was inspired by his brother mishearing a Celtic chant for manager Martin O’Neill. The weight of We’re No Here makes its presence known just before the one-minute mark. It’s slow and hypnotic and even if the volume is down, it still sounds loud. It’s that kind of song. For its sheer heft, the Mr. Beast track was featured on the Miami Vice soundtrack (the 2006 one) and an episode of Top Gear (Season 9 Episode 3’s American Road Trip).

San Pedro (Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, 2011)

Whereas songs like My Father My King and Batcat are propped up by riffs built like concrete plinths, this highlight from Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will is pacy and nervy. It also has quick washes of black metal guitar if Darkthrone hailed from Pollok Country Park rather than those frosty Nordic forests. Former guitarist John Cummings told The Quietus that it was fun to record: “It’s probably the easiest song we’ve ever written. It’s basically just one riff played over and over again with different degrees of volume and panic.”

Canadian prog band Mystery gained a profile boost when their singer Benoit David was hired by Yes in 2009. More drama was to follow when he split with the British veterans in 2012 then left Mystery the following year. In 2023 they released ninth album Redemption, their third with vocalist Jean Pageau, and bandleader Michel St-Père updated Prog on their story so far.

Michel St-Père is obviously a very happy man, thrilled to have finally released Mystery’s latest album, Redemption – which, despite the global events of the last three years, has exceeded all his expectations in terms of pre-sales and rave reviews.

“The comments about it are all positive so far and the pre-sale went really well. It’s been our best ever, so I think the fans did not forget about us during the past four years,” enthuses Mystery’s founder, guitarist, composer and producer. “We’re very happy about this, especially as we have sold a lot of the records in the UK.”

From beginning to end, Redemption is another Mystery masterclass in how to channel influences from classic British prog and US AOR, elevating them into panoramic symphonic soundscapes, full of moments that catch the breath and capture the imagination. Though much of the album was written and half-recorded before the pandemic, the enforced hiatus gave St-Père time to reflect, his observations providing the overarching theme for both the title track and epic closer Is This How the Story Ends?

St-Père recalls: “The band were touring and it was going really well. There were many concerts prepared in 2020 – but all of them were cancelled so we lost track of what we were doing. We also lost the point of rushing to do the new album, so we put it aside and released the Blu-ray concert Caught In The Whirlwind Of Time in 2020 instead. Meanwhile, I continued working on the album, making the new songs.

“When we started touring again, we went to the Midsummer Prog Festival in the Netherlands last year. It was there we decided to get the new album out. It was like kicking our butt to get it finished!”

St-Père wrote six of the album’s eight compositions; the other two – love song Every Note and the airy Homecoming – were contributed by vocalist/flautist/frontman Jean Pageau and keyboardist/guitarist Antoine Michaud respectively. One song completed before Covid was Pearls And Fire and, as St-Père explains, it was a fan’s suggestion via social media that gave him the idea for the history lesson it tells. “I knew the song was about war, but I didn’t know where it would go. This fan said to me, ‘You go to the Netherlands very often and call it your second home. You know there was a Canadian soldier called Léo Major who saved a Dutch town during World War II? You should write a song about him.’ I went on the internet and started investigating, and I said, ‘Okay, that’s going to fit perfectly with the song.’”

For all its sonic loveliness, themes that Redemption covers include migration in hard-hitting opener Behind The Mirror, inspired by the heartbreaking photograph of a tiny Syrian boy’s lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach. Beauty And The Least is another morality tale about a prostitute looking for love and yearning for another life. Is This How The Story Ends? embraces all Mystery’s dramatic, intense storytelling, but St-Père kept his options open about how it should appear on record.

“There is something special about this song because it could have been in two parts, the first to open the album and the longer part to close it,” he explains. “In the end, we decided to leave it as one long song. It’s going to be a fun song to play live! It talks about everything that happened involving Covid, thinking how everything might have been finished because of it. I put it in terms of a train passing by: you either jump on it or miss it. There’s a question [implied] at the end: ‘Have I missed the train, or have I arrived?’ It’s not predicting the end – it’s there to make us think that the end could come at any time.”

St-Père is also heartened that the current band line-up has remained stable for six years, each band member making a significant contribution to the musical arrangements before he Mystery-stamps them with his meticulous production. Astonishingly, it’s now nearly a decade since Mystery enlisted Pageau. You can’t talk about all things Mysteron with St-Père without asking him about the well-publicised chain of events that led to his arrival. That was when in 2008, Yes recruited their erstwhile vocalist, Benoît David, who was previously with a Yes tribute band. The Canadians had to work their own schedule around when David toured and recorded with the real Yes.

In the end, illness forced David to quit Yes in 2012, then Mystery the following year. “It’s a sad story. I have not seen Benoît for about four years and when we last spoke back then, he wasn’t making music: he had to start his life all over again.” Ironically, St-Père says, David’s presence in Yes meant Mystery got some extra recognition when fans started seeking out their music.

They kept David’s departure from Mystery a secret for a year: “We did not announce Benoît was leaving the band as we hoped he would come back. It took us a good year to find Jean, who is a very charismatic singer and really tells the stories of the songs. We tried other singers, and it sounded like bad karaoke nights. It was very disappointing for the band; we ended up thinking we would have to go for second best.

“Jean had been in Styx and Saga tribute bands, which is strange as I think I saw all the videos of Canadian tribute bands but never saw one of him in them anywhere!”

St-Père also runs Mystery’s record label Unicorn Digital, which, over recent years, has scaled back its commitments with other bands: “It is very hard to work with the newer artists as it costs a lot of money to put out an album, so the investment is not always worth it. There are many good bands out there who have some difficulty reaching their audiences. Nowadays, they don’t believe the help a label can give them. Often, when the younger bands get in contact, it’s because they are desperate so it does not start the relationship very well.”

One of the bands on his label are fellow Canadians Huis. St-Père has started working with them on their new album, which he hopes will get a release later this year. There will now be a lull in the Mysteron calendar until later this year when they play Progstock in the USA and a couple of shows in Canada.

St-Père has noticed that Canadian audiences are increasing on a par with those in Europe. “People tend to forget that Canada is a very big country with a lot less people. That’s why we’ve never played Vancouver before! Sometimes, bands from Europe contact me to ask if I will help them with a tour of Canada – and I always say no!”

As for coming back to the UK, St-Père hints a return is likely, their last visit being in 2019 with a one-off date in Norwich. “It is always fun for us to go there, but the paperwork and visas make everything complicated and more expensive for us. It’s funny in a way because this has always been the case for us going to the UK and now, I see all these European bands complaining about the difficulties getting the visas to go to the UK and vice versa for UK artists. It makes me think that nothing has changed for us.

“The pandemic stopped many of our touring plans, but we hope to be back soon. It depends on the offers we get. The story is definitely not over.”