Art-Punk Quintet Mock Media Detail New Album 'Rat Bastard' Due July 17
MOCK MEDIA
DETAIL FORTHCOMING ALBUM RAT BASTARD
DUE JULY 17, 2026 VIA MAC’S RECORD LABEL
SHARE LEAD SINGLE “RAT BASTARD”
SUPPORTING MAC DEMARCO ON U.S. TOUR IN MAY
Los Angeles, CA (April 21, 2026) – Hailing from North Okanagan, British Columbia, the art-punk quartet Mock Media has increasingly become a welcome reprieve from the self-seriousness of contemporary indie rock. Armed with a whip-smart humor, the band wears its influences on its sleeve, pulling inspiration from acts as eclectic as Bruce Springsteen, The Ramones, Bad Brains and Desmond Dekker, while simultaneously sounding entirely new. Mock Media have discovered a sound all their own, and today they’re excited to detail the release of their forthcoming album Rat Bastard due July 17 2026 on Mac DeMarco’s Mac’s Record Label in North and South America, and share the title track. The band will be supporting Demarco for a run of sold-out shows across the U.S. in May. Full list of dates below.
Guitarist-vocalist Evan Aasen, while speaking on the album’s lead single, says, “...it is a classic The Cars-inspired rock song to play on the radio while you’re in the shop, working on some rusty metal with the radio on in the background. ‘Rat Bastard’ is a song about everyone having a little rat bastard inside them, acting too wild. A pop rock song for the whole family to enjoy.”
Rat Bastard laces Mock Media’s renegade punk hijinks with disparate styles such as Brazilian baile funk, The Beatles, Eurodance, Afrobeats, dub, Aboriginal folk, and heavy metal – a restless experimental drive solely overridden by the sweaty embrace of their correlative brotherhood. Syncopated rhythms etch into soil like glyphs of glory; a squall of voices shakes the pillars of heaven in matrimonial defiance; guitars blaze gasoline trails over smoldering asphalt roads.
Rat Bastard Track Listing:
01.) Mock City Rock
02.) Take It
03.) Rat Bastard
04.) Fell From The Top
05.) Crushed
06.) City’s On Fire
07.) White Lion
08.) Turn For The World
09.) Built For Speed
10.) Straight Line
(Download LP artwork HERE)
Mock Media Tour Dates:
05/02/26 - Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex * (SOLD OUT)
05/03/26 - Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom * (SOLD OUT)
05/05/26 - La Vista, NE @ The Astro * (SOLD OUT)
05/06/26 - Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue * (SOLD OUT)
05/07/26 - Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed (Fairgrounds) * (SOLD OUT)
05/08/26 - Detroit, MI @ Masonic Temple Theatre * (SOLD OUT)
05/09/26 - Cleveland, OH @ The Agora * (SOLD OUT)
05/11/26 - Asheville, NC @ Thomas Wolfe Auditorium * (SOLD OUT)
05/12/26 - Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium * (SOLD OUT)
* = supporting Mac Demarco
Rat Bastard - Album Bio:
So what good is rebellion without a system left to aim it at? British Columbia’s Mock Media – a troupe of four childhood friends – have decided to join hands and circle around the bonfire as the surrounding scenery spirals into utter madness. The group’s newest recording chapter Rat Bastard – out Friday, July 17 via Mac’s Record Label – shatters the bondages of obedience, finding Evan Aasen (guitars/voice), Garnet Aronyk Muhammad (bass/voice), Austin Boylan (guitars/voice), and Bennett Smith (drums) gleefully astray across pastures both barren and overgrown.
“Built for Speed” (written by Aasen during one of his many stints operating the cockpit) eradicates any whiff of art school cool you may (or may not) have pegged Mock Media into, fully leaning into Judas Priest vespers with the glee of a trooper lighting a cigar with a stick of dynamite. “Mock City Rock” is quickly adopted as the group’s requisite flagship anthem, coming alive as a purebred Vernonite answer to MC5, XTC and New York Dolls.
From the junkyard of rock music’s shattered dreams, Mock Media scavenge some odd pearls with the album’s rootsy title track – bouncing to the beat of an 80s reverb snare drum and spirited chants, while the Fleetwood Mac-inspired cadence of “Crushed” adds a warmth and whimsy to all the brouhaha. The dub-inflected delirium of “Fell from The Top” and “City’s On Fire” cheeses with a mouth of blood, as fairy dust melodies beckon attuned spirits. Meanwhile, the woebegone power balladry of “Take It” adds just the right pinch of pastiche to rally it into bona fide torch song territory. “Straight Line” – despite its title – flips the script from disenchanted desert rock to a full throttle kamikaze into a glorious 90s techno funeral pyre.
Despite Rat Bastard’s more superabundant sonic left turns, Mock Media insist they’re not doing anything radically different from previous incarnations of the band. In North Okanagan’s rocky valley, if one shouts loud enough, one reckons that at some point, you stop guessing whether you’re receiving the lonely echo returning or some higher voice of the divine. What Mock Media are building, or why it should be located in such a remote and desolate place, no one could say.
“We’re constantly trying to channel that spiritual energy, and it’s hard, especially in recordings. We feel like we’ve achieved it live before, but we want to fully lose ourselves and lock in as a group. As for any specific message: we really just care about each other, and about making music together. At the end of the day, it’s us singing and us playing together… and that’s all we really know how to do.”
Connect with Mock Media:
Apple Music | Bandcamp | Instagram | Spotify
Photo Credit: John de Courcy, Analog Media Company
