An Interview with Adam Witmer of Moiscus

Ever since I met Adam and Reegan in high school, their artistic ventures have always caught my attention. From comedy rap groups, to black metal, to experimental ambient albums, their music has always stayed far away from mainstream tastes. No project is this truer for than Moiscus, which has evolved from a solo one-off EP into one of the most well-known goregrind bands in the Midwest. A user on Bandcamp named Bobert Gnarlboro left this comment on their last album Oligophrenic Anthropoids: “This album makes you feel like you're traveling through a blizzard where instead of snow it's all metal shrapnel whipping around in 50 mph winds. long story short, shit SLAPS.”

I sat down with Adam over a few cold brews and asked him about his early history with metal music. “Ever since I started playing guitar, I have always gravitated towards metal. I think it was because I grew up so close to bands like Miss May I. Eventually around the 6th grade when we were all playing guitar hero, Reegan and I discovered Slayer. Before that, we had been listening to Metallica and Megadeath, who are both really great bands, but Slayer was the first thing that actually seemed scary. And really badass. A few years after that, we heard the band Death, and that was a real game changer.”

After Adam’s house flooded in 2013, he lost all his guitar equipment that was kept in the basement. This, combined with living at Miami University, led to Adam taking a six-year break from playing guitar. When he finally got a chance to get some gear, he was ready to play more than ever. Reegan never went to college and had established himself as an important part of the Dayton metal scene, both as a drummer and as an event promoter. Reegan urged Adam to do something with metal, which Adam thought was funny because he had just finished playing synth on an album with the experimental ambient duo Elk Manakin with Stephen Orban.

Stephen Orban is another high school friend of ours who is well-known as a talented multinstrumentalist. With him on guitar, another friend on drums, and me on bass, we won the talent show my Senior year in 2013 with a garage rock cover of “Hey Ya” by Outkast. These days, Stephen lives in Indianapolis and leads the indie rock band, The Boomies

Adam started programming “hilariously fast metal drums” using his technical experience from Manakin. Interestingly, there is an overlap between the two drastically different bands. Elk Manakin was still active during the recording of THE CRYSTAL EVOCATION OF THE CHAINS OF DISRUPTION, and Stephen plays bass on every track. Reegan also made an early appearance, offering guidance to Adam and recording a few brutal vocal tracks. This early EP was primarily driven by comedy, including samples from NBA games and clips from Nathan for You. With Adam fearing that people wouldn’t understand it, the release of this EP remained a secret until Moiscus’s future releases.

Then, the pandemic started. Adam and Reegan had a unique opportunity to build their chemistry as songwriters during the period of isolation. Reegan began tuning his snare as high pitched as possible, and the musical jokes and rapid-fire drums began to come alive.

“I basically told Reegan to play as fast as possible all the time. There so many dad metal bands and just boring metal bands, where it’s just like 4/4 measure that does the same thing, with a verse chorus etc. We wanted to make sure nobody ever got bored, that’s why everything is fast, and the songs are so short. We wanted it to be a visceral experience where everything is always in your face and changing, and it doesn’t get too repetitive.”

The visual style of Moiscus is unique to say the least. Unlike other bands in the metal scene, Moiscus can be seen wearing bright colors and tie-dye shirts. Their Bandcamp features a photo of an exploding SUV and a photo of them standing in front of a Dayton PD police cruiser. I asked Adam to describe their look.

“It’s really easy to do a generic metal aesthetic. As an outsider to the scene at first, I could see a lot of what everybody else was putting out. There were a lot of really cool artists, but everybody used like the same ten ones. And you could kinda tell. You can just tell if someone has a Gruesome Graphics art on their album cover. It’s actually really cool how the artists can be just as involved as the musicians in metal. Selfishly, I wanted to do that too. I just wanted people to go ‘what the fuck is this?’ whenever they saw my art. We were gonna be a new unheard of band, so the only thing we had going was Reegan’s reputation as a really good drummer, and the curiosity of my non-metalhead friends wondering what the fuck I was doing. The really crazy art was our way to stick out.”

Adam said, “We’re not your typical dues in leather vests and makeup . . . I have my own collection of metal shirts, but I don’t look like your typical metal dude and I’m not gonna change myself just to fit in. That would be kinda weird, and it’s not something I would do. Reegan has always been into metal, it’s just who he is. For Moiscus he lightens it up. For our last black metal festival, I wore crocs and a wolf shirt, while Reegan wore a Bugs Bunny tank top. Meanwhile, there were people playing who wore makeup and corpse paint, all this cringy metal stuff, actually its not that cringy. I’m not trying to hate on anyone. It’s actually kinda cringey though. We were the only people not wearing black.”

The last time I saw Moiscus live, it was the beginning of their US tour with Gross Load from Wisconsin. The whole crowd went wild for Moiscus, and the cult following they had developed on social media with their unique style was more apparent than ever. Moiscus is a band that mocks the stereotypes of metal from a place that is free from hate. They love the music that they lampoon, and make a serious attempt at putting on an entertaining show. Because of this, they have been embraced as one of the funniest members of the metal community and have developed a style that is completely their own creation.