Mock Media Share "Mock City Rock"

MOCK MEDIA

SHARE NEW SINGLE, “MOCK CITY ROCK”

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FORTHCOMING ALBUM RAT BASTARD

DUE JULY 17, 2026 VIA MAC’S RECORD LABEL

“...tailor-made to be blasted with the windows down…” - Paste Magazine [on “Rat Bastard”]

Los Angeles, CA (May 20, 2026) – The art-punk quartet Mock Media – hailing from North Okanagan, British Columbia – has increasingly become a welcome reprieve from the self-seriousness of contemporary indie rock. The band recently detailed the release of their excellent forthcoming album Rat Bastard due July 17 2026 on Mac DeMarco’s Mac’s Record Label in North and South America, and shared the title track, which Paste Magazine designated their “Song of the Week,” calling it “...chock full of the stickiest phrases, ones that arrive hammed-up with a Rick Springfield-meets-The Clash, ‘80s power pop sheen.” Earlier this month, Mock Media supported Mac Demarco for a run of sold-out shows across the U.S.

Today, the band return with their forthcoming album’s opening salve, “Mock City Rock,” which guitarist-vocalist Evan Aasen, while speaking on the song, calls an “...anthemic rock song that defines the whole band, with our full power, inviting the audience to ‘come alive.’”

WATCH “MOCK CITY ROCK” VISUALIZER

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

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