A Dirty Dozen with WESLIE NEGRÓN from MOTHS – July 2025

Photo credit: Rafael Burgos

According to a recent press release: “MOTHS, the progressive metal unit hailing from San Juan, Puerto Rico, are excited to announce a full US tour in support of their new album, Septem, due out on August 1st. The tour will kick off on July 31st in Orlando, FL at Will’s Pub and concludes at the prestigious Somergloom Festival on August 9th in Someville, MA. Septem, is a visceral journey through the Seven Deadly Sins, with each track embodying a facet of indulgence, obsession, and self-destruction—from the corrosive jealousy of “Envy” to the insatiable hunger of “Gluttony” and the rage of “Wrath.” The album plunges listeners into a dark, immersive experience where desire spirals into chaos. Diving deeper into heavier territory, MOTHS fuse elements of Death and Black Metal with their signature blend of Progressive, Psychedelic, Doom, and Stoner Metal, crafting a sound that’s both aggressive and atmospheric.” We get bassist Weslie to discuss new music, influences, and more…

1. Tell us a little about your latest release.  What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through?  Are there any hidden nuggets you put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

There’s nothing really “hidden” within our latest single “Wrath.” I’d dare to say that this is one of our most straightforward songs and basically what you will get within our new album Septem. The conditions on which these songs were written and recorded basically had us in a pot where we needed to make quick decisions. We traveled to Argentina to record the album and there were a couple of songs that were not finished, so we decided to finish them at the studio and “Wrath” was one of them. Just straightforward, heavy, darker, and more extreme than anything we’ve done before. You can hear a bit of our Black and Death Metal influences, as well as you can hear how Mariel adds the soprano-esque vocals to add to the overall dark and mysterious vibe at the end of the track.

2. What got you into music, and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

I’ve always been keen on music since very little. Being from Puerto Rico you’re surrounded by music pretty much everywhere and my family was huge on Salsa and Merengue. My godfather would play Salsa to me pretty much every time I’d be with him, especially Cano Estremera with Bobby Valentín, the latter being one of the best Bass Players from Puerto Rico. My godfather would always point out the bass and had me paying attention to it, which subconsciously maybe stayed in my brain and made me interested in playing the instrument later in my teenager years after I decided that I didn’t want to pursue the guitar. The first time I was exposed to Rock / Metal was in 2003 with Linkin Park’s Meteora. I remember watching the video for “Somewhere I Belong” for the first time and seeing how cool Chester Bennington looked in that video and I was instantly hooked. I got obsessed with looking for information about all the bands that I was following at the time. I went through an emo phase as well, so bands like My Chemical Romance, Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy, were instrumental to the overall development of my music taste. It wasn’t until middle school that a friend of mine introduced me to classics like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, and I was hooked from the get-go. From there I went to more extreme stuff and the rest is history. I think that I’ve wanted to be a musician and an entertainer from a very early time in my life.

3. Building on that, is there a specific song, album, performer, or live show that guided your musical taste?

Well, the bands I mentioned above are some of the biggest influences in my career. I can say that THE bands that made the most impact in my life were: Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, System of a Down, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Into Eternity, and Opeth, in that order. You can see the overall development into more “serious” and “complicated” music as time went on, but I feel that having gone through all of those stages, plus my overall musical background having been raised listening to Latin music, has given me the tools and the knowledge to understand my instrument and have enough references to know what I’m going to implement into MOTHS’ material.

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be, and why?

There are so many… Mikael Åkerfeldt for sure. Opeth is my favorite band, and I admire the career and all the stuff that they’ve done as a band since the early 90’s. They struggled a lot to get where they are, and I feel I resonate with Mikael that way too. I also feel that his musical vision and his knowledge will be able to compliment and add more information into my musical chops. I think he can enhance some ideas and hopefully I could add some interesting perspective to how he approaches composing. Other names would be Steven Wilson, I love Kevin Moore’s more electronic / synth projects like O.S.I. and Chroma Key, so it would be cool to collaborate with him in that style at some point too.

5. What is your favorite activity when out of the studio and/or not on tour?  What do you like to do to unwind?

I’m huge into baseball. Big Yankees fan since I was a kid. Although I’m not sure if it helps me to unwind, usually brings more stress than relaxation, but it really helps to kinda have another tool to decompress a bit and redirect my anger to haha.

6. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before? What is the one comparison a reviewer or fan has made that made you cringe or you disagreed with?

Lately we’re using Progressive / Doom Metal as the main description of our music, although some of our old material is more Stoner and Psychedelic. We’re a bit all over the place because our influences are very varied and we just write music that we enjoy playing and listening to, without having any barriers or limitations. In terms of comparisons, I don’t think we’ve gotten any comparisons that I consider cringe, but we’ve had people compare us to bands like Gojira and Pearl Jam, which are obviously very different from within each other and different to us. I just find it interesting that everyone has a unique perspective about our material and, honestly, it’s quite a compliment whenever anyone compares us to a big name, even if I don’t hear it.

7. When your band is hanging out together, who cooks, who gets the drinks in, and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

We really don’t hang out as much outside of rehearsals or shows, we’re very busy people with families, jobs, etc. I can say that we’re mostly talking about geeky stuff when we’re not playing. From movies, TV Shows, to animated series, Omar and Jonathan (Guitars) have a very wide range of knowledge on that end. We also talk about sports, especially Basketball and, in my case, baseball. We’re pretty chill in that regard, very normal and potentially boring haha.

8. When was the last time you were starstruck and who was it?

So, I book shows here in Puerto Rico and the last international band that I booked was Soen. For those unfamiliar with the band, Soen is the band of ex-Opeth drummer Martin López. Martin played on my favorite Opeth records, especially on Ghost Reveries, but also on classics like Blackwater Park and Damnation. I’m not sure if starstruck is the right word, but at the beginning it felt very intimidating working with one of my musical heroes. After they arrived at the Island and we spoke for a bit, he was as down to earth as possible and that helped me to calm down a bit. I really hope they had a blast during their stay here, because it was a huge honor to be able to share some time and conversations in the few days that they were here.

9. What is the best part of being a musician? If you could no longer be a musician for whatever reason, what would be your dream job?

There are some many great parts about being a musician. I think the first one starts when you’re in the jam room with the rest of the band and when an idea gets to be concrete, that feeling is something I can’t describe. It’s that moment when everyone looks at each other and everyone goes like “yeah… this works!” that’s just an unreal feeling. And then when you perform live and people react positively to whatever you write, that’s just something that I don’t think anything else I’ve done in life has even compared to. Some musicians really overlook the fact that people decide to spend whatever amount of time watching you perform, especially in an era where there are infinite options of entertainment, and that’s something I will never take for granted. If I weren’t a musician, for whatever reason, I’d love to work at the Postal Office. There’s something about communicating and connecting people around the world with physical items that just feels fascinating for me. That or some sort of involvement with baseball behind the scenes; I couldn’t play for shit though!

10. What is one question you have always wanted an interviewer to ask – and what is the answer? Conversely, what question are you tired of answering?

I don’t think I have one question that I’ve wanted to be asked, I’m pretty much an open book and I think I’m ready for pretty much anything. Maybe one thing would be to shed some light on how the overall process of being in an independent band from Puerto Rico is, with the purpose of inspiring more people to do their thing. It hasn’t been easy at all and there have been a lot of sacrifices, which I’m sure a lot of musicians from all over the world would resonate with, but maybe develop a little bit more around what I’ve personally done in my career and the band’s career as well, would be cool to talk about. Question that I’m tired of answering? I could say every time that we have to talk about our biography as a band, but in the boring way, not necessarily trying to get any substantial info from the band, just a bland answer about the band and that’s it. Not really a big deal, but we’ve done it so much that it gets tiring at some point haha.

11. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over,” even if it didn’t change your current situation?

Oh yeah… many! I think the overall mentality and approach to “making it” in the industry is something I would reconsider. I used to force things too hard to happen which sometimes translated towards me being desperate and it really didn’t work in my favor. At the same time, I feel like these decisions and approaches have helped develop my knowledge and experience within the feel. I learn every day and keep learning new ways to approach every move I make. I think that the main one is having empathy with other people in the industry, we’re all in this together and there’s a lot of us that are struggling to spread the word about our work. Still, very grateful for everything that has happened in my career that keeps shaping me.

12. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

I would probably say Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. This is such an influential record for me and watching the footage of those recording sessions, the creative conversations, the fights, everything really made everything work and shape one of the best, if not the best, records in human history. This album is everything to me. It has given me core memories with some of my best friends, partners, and even strangers. It’s a record that is as relevant as any current record and it’s just timeless. I think it’s a perfect record with no flaws.

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Category: Interviews