Weslie Negrón

July 9, 2025

Weslie Negrón

Bassist Weslie Negrón (of Moths) talks about their new album Septem, touring in the Americas, Metal Thursdays at Ralph’s Rock Diner, and the music club scene in his hometown San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Moths are playing Saturday, 9 August at Somergloom 2025.

The bassist zoomed with Hump Day News ahead of Moths’ North American tour, starting in Orlando (7/31) and finishing in Somerville at Somergloom (8/9).

AUDIO

TRANSCRIPT

Hump Day News: Here I am to welcome Weslie. He is the bass player from Moths. They are a “Puerto Rican progressive metal band known for their dynamic and genre defying sound,” and they'll be playing Somergloom at the start of August in Somerville, MA.

Weslie, thank you for joining us.

Weslie Negrón: No, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure talking to you and talking about this event that we're definitely really looking forward to.

Hump Day News: Really looking forward to it, and it's the 5th anniversary, so you're coming on a good year. Who knows if they'll have a special 5th anniversary cake or anything like that, but it's definitely cool to see a great local independent music festival just keep growing and expanding and attracting new audiences and new performers, you know, from all over.

But let's back up a little before we get to Somergloom. I wanted to ask you a little bit about Moths and a little bit about your new album that's coming out. I think it's called Septem. Am I saying it right? Because it sounds like a Latin thing. Like A Roman thing.

Weslie Negrón: Yeah, it is. Latin, it's Latin for “seven,” yes.

Hump Day News: Yeah, and it seems like if I'm reading this correctly and you know, I haven't been to church in a while, it's the seven deadly sins, right? Like, each song is dedicated to a specific sin.

Weslie Negrón: Correct, yes. It's basically a concept album around the seven deadly sins. This kind of came from a National Geographic article or read maybe 15 years ago where they were talking about where the demons that were applied to each of the sins based on the Catholic Church.

I remember reading it, I was like, man, it would be so cool to write a concept album about this. And like, you know. Get the demon. The demons concept and apply it specific like a visual. You know, artwork for for each of the signals and each of the songs…

Back then I was in a previous band here in Puerto Rico. They were really into the idea. But once I formed the band I formed, Moths, and we released our previous record, I was like “Hey, there's an idea I had a couple of years ago. This is kind of like the concept I wanted to make…”

Hump Day News: So it had been hanging around.

Weslie Negrón: Yeah.

Hump Day News: Just to give some context, the self-titled debut Moths [came out] in 2018, you did a split in 2020, and you released Space Force, which is kind of like kind of between the EP and LP. I didn’t do the math on how long that's running, but that was in 2022. So it had been waiting in the background, Septem. So you brought it to them, what did they make of it?

Moths

Weslie Negrón: Oh yeah. I mean, they understood the concept. And once we started writing the music, everyone understood that we wanted to have, like, a seamless kind of track list. When you get to listen to the record, there's no pause in between songs. Every song, it leads to the other. And we wrote the record like that.

Actually, I think the first 3 to 4 songs were written in order, you know. So we wanted it and wanted it in the album. And then the lyrics came into play. The majority of these lyrics are written by our previous singer Damaris Rodríguez. Now our current singer, Mariel Viruet – which is the one we hear in Septum – she finished with Jonathan [Miranda], our lead guitar player. They finished the lyrics for two of the songs that did not have lyrics.

[Septem is] more of a psychological, introspective, you know, kind of venture. Rather than just criticizing the church and, you know, talking about the sins in a more raw way. It's more trying to understand, you know, coming from the fact that you know when we were born as human beings, we were born evil. You know, that's imprinted in our DNA. And what are the things that we act upon within these things, and just understand it, and obviously try not to replicate those actions. But, yeah, that's kind of like the idea behind the concept.

Hump Day News: As long as you're on the topic of talking about the concept of the songs, and you've mentioned there are visual associations that come with each of those themes. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Some of the videos that you shot for this – let's see, it was “Wrath,” “Envy,” and “Gluttony” all have videos out right now – you are either the director or co-director on all three.

So tell me a little bit about your vision for one or more of those, because as I was looking and listening to them, they seemed to have a very distinctive look. Each of them you, if you didn't know otherwise you might not have thought they were created by the same director or band. Just a very distinctive visual look. Yeah, tell me a little bit about how those came about.

Weslie Negrón: For sure. Yeah. So visuals are very important for us. The visual aesthetic of the music. I think it's very important to have it aligned. You know, all together, some of my favorite bands ever have this kind of, like, nailed down. You know, the whole audio visual experience. So you know, when we formed the band, that was something that we really wanted to implement. All across with the artwork, with the videos, et cetera.

Luckily for this round and this album, we were able to work with Drew Storks, who is a director that worked with us on the “Gluttony” and the “Wrath” video. And we just worked with Rob Shotwell, who was the one who just worked with us on “Envy,” which we actually released yesterday.

And [the videos] are a little bit different to each other because we wanted to portray the essence of each of the sins, right? So for example, obviously with “Gluttony,” we have this guy who's just being force-fed to eat, to continue to eat, until he gets tired of it and kind of, you know, dies at the end eating so much food in such little time.

Getting into make-up for “Wrath”

Then we have “Wrath,” which talks about this story of this guy feeling, you know, attracted to our singer's voice. And it's kind of like understanding how all the violence happening with women is precisely because of man, and, you know, all the wrath that that provokes into pretty much everyone who's on the women's side, of course. And you know, we're definitely on that side as well.

And then we have “Envy,” which is completely acted by our singer, Mariel. She basically portrays her good side and her bad side, her bad side being envy, and how envy kills. You know, she eats a rotten apple and that's basically kind of like the idea.

Hump Day News: I found that one very visually powerful – that was the black and white one?

Weslie Negrón: Correct, yes.

Hump Day News: It's got this striking black and white look and it has almost like an “old time” cinema kind of feel. How did you get that effect?

Weslie Negrón: Yeah. So when we were coming up with ideas, Rob, had not done a music video before where he did not have the whole band performing. And, in our case, some of the guys are kind of reserved in regards to shooting music videos with the whole band and performing. So we were looking to different options, and I always wanted to do a “silent movie”-type music video. And I came up with the idea to Mariel, and I came up to Rob as well, and they understood quickly. We met. We kind of like, you know, talk about ideas.

The whole process was super simple. We shot this in like 6 hours – the whole thing. And then Rob, you know, went into editing. So he's the one who worked the magic to make it look like that. But yeah, that was it. It was just precisely that just tried to get the idea of how a silent movie works, you know? Strong acting performances and it combines [well] with the song, I think. The mission was accomplished, for sure.

Hump Day News: It looked great. Let me let me talk a little bit more or invite you to expand a little bit more on recording the album because I see you went to Argentina? So how does that connection happen? Are you guys familiar with the music scene over there? Is there a lot of exchange between, you know, musical communities in Puerto Rico? Do they do a lot of touring down there? Do they meet a lot of musicians, make a lot of connections? How does that work?

Weslie Negrón: Yeah, this opportunity came because after the pandemic, the studio, Romaphonic, they actually reached out to us. They were giving away [recording time], you know, because they obviously lost a lot of business during the pandemic. They were giving this offer to bands from Latin America that wanted to come to Argentina to record the whole album.

We were there for a week and we did most of the mixing on site, which was very interesting. And when we crunched out the numbers, we're like, this is definitely doable. And that particular studio, the team they assigned to us was awesome. They understood the idea of the music, you know, very quickly.

So the whole process was very fun. And it was like, you know, we get to record it in a first-class studio for a budget that's very comfortable. Honestly, if I'm being very honest, I think the flights cost more than what we actually invested in the whole recording, you know?

Hump Day News: Wow!

Weslie Negrón: So we just did it, and we did the majority of the instruments at the studio. Like I said, we spent five days recording drums, space and guitars, and then we did two days of pre-mixing. Then we did the vocals, and the synths, and the banjo on the intro of the album at our studio Music Dorks, which is the studio of our drummer, Daniel (Figueroa).

But yeah, the whole process was very interesting. It was our first time recording outside of Puerto Rico. It was our first time in Argentina. We got to play the show there. We did play a show because we already knew people over there. When we released our first EP, there was an underground radio station that reached out to us and they wanted to interview us, so we did.

And then during the pandemic we participated in this online streaming festival called Heresy Fest Online. [And they scheduled] the actual [in-person] Heresy Fest in 2022 and we went there and we played that over there. There were a few bands from Puerto Rico who were, you know, contacted to go, and take this advantage of this package. I believe, like, I want to say like five or six bands, including us, have gone down there and we're able to record.

So that's mostly the exchange. But for bands here, especially in the metal scene, it's easier for us to actually travel to the US rather than going to anywhere in Latin America. It's a little bit more expensive to do so. So no, they're not actually a lot of bands…

Hump Day News: I was gonna ask that. I mean, why? Why is it more expensive to go the South America route rather than North America? I would have – is it the flights?

Weslie Negrón: Yeah, I mean, it's a geopolitical thing too, you know, like Puerto Rico being a territory of the United States, it's easier. For us to go to Argentina, we needed to go to Florida – I think it was like Fort Lauderdale – and then go down to Colombia. So you know….

Hump Day News: Alright. Oh man…

Weslie Negrón: So it's super cheap – ok, not SUPER cheap – but it’s cheaper to fly to, say, Florida and then start [touring in the US], which we're actually doing with this run, right? We're starting in Florida and ending in Somerville. It's cheaper doing it that way than, say, going to Mexico and doing a few shows there, than going down [to Central & South America].

Like, even the bands from Latin America that are not able to tour in the US, they don't do the whole Latin American tour like you would in the US [by driving]. They actually have to fly. The distances are very big. So yeah, you know, for us at this point it's more accessible to be able to go to the US.

Hump Day News: Correct me if I'm wrong, because I got this off BandsInTown, and I never know if they're accurate or not, but it said that you guys had played Ralph's Rock Diner in 2019 in Worcester.

Weslie Negrón: Yeah, that was our first show in the US ever.

Hump Day News: Oh, wow, do you remember that at all?

Weslie Negrón: Oh, yeah, yeah. That was my third time playing at Ralph’s because, with my previous band, Zafakon, we played there twice at Metal Thursdays with Chris (Farmerie). They've always been awesome hosts.

For this time around with Moths, to be honest, I was a little bit nervous, because we were a new band. We had just released a four song EP and we were just trying to see if this is something that would land. And we played another Metal Thursday. We've played around 11PM, and a bunch of people stayedm and after we played there was a line over at the merch table, which obviously was awesome…

Hump Day News: Cool!

Weslie Negrón: And that was the way the people reacted. I've always loved playing in Massachusetts. I've played Worcester, played Boston, and now we're doing Somerville, and you know, we played – I don't remember the city – a house show last time, and it was awesome as well.

Hump Day News: Have you played Western Massachusetts?

Weslie Negrón: No, no, I don’t think so.

Hump Day News: You should check out this RPM Festival – have you heard of this?

Weslie Negrón: I have, I have. Actually, I have played in Western Massachusetts. I used to be in a hardcore band called Bicicleta, and we did two shows with this hardcore label called called FDR, which we were assigned to. So we had two shows there. We played at Anchors Up was one of the venues and I don't remember that the other one. But they were awesome shows. Yeah, I've heard about RPM Fest, it's just a matter of time.

Hump Day News: You guys would fit that bill perfectly, if you ever get out there.

Weslie Negrón: Yeah, we wish that. Yeah, it would be awesome.

Hump Day News: Speaking of touring, alright, you start in Orlando for this tour coming up, and you end in Somerville at Somergloom. One date I noticed along there that jumped out at me was the Philadelphia date. You're playing the Museum of Contemporary Art (PHIL MoCA) I see. Our local Museum of Contemporary Art, they do shows like that sometimes too, and it seems really cool. It's like you get to see live independent music in a totally different atmosphere. But how do those [gigs] get set up? How did you guys get set up with that gig? It seems like such a strange circumstance.

Weslie Negrón: It's all about networking. You know, the guy who's helping us book that particular show, his name is Dave. They were on vacation in Puerto Rico a couple months ago. And actually, yeah, a connection, a friend of ours (he's from Massachusetts actually) got back [and] he wrote me, like, “Hey, are there any metal shows happening this weekend over Puerto Rico? I have a few friends that are over there. They want to check it out.” [And I said] “Yeah, there's actually a black metal band from Portland coming in, like, I'll just drive them around.” So I was with them for a few days.

And then when we decided that we wanted to do these shows, I reached out to him and asked them, “Hey, man, like, you know, can you help us? Like, find someone that can help us book a show?” And [he’s] like, “I'll take care of it.” And then he told us about [the Philly gig]. He came up with the lineup and then the dates. Yeah. Yeah, I checked out the photos of the venue. It looks pretty awesome. Very excited about that one. Philly is another of my favorite cities to play in.

Hump Day News: Nice. Philly’s great. You never know. Alright, Let me turn to Somergloom. Now, you've got the new album coming out. Are you going to play a lot of the newer stuff off the new album? Because right now only three track tracks are streaming, right? So anything beyond that would be, you know, a live debut, at least for Massachusetts.

Weslie Negrón: For sure. Yeah, we're actually playing the whole album at Somergloom. Yeah, we were playing the whole album on three dates of the tour. Obviously the day of the release, which we're playing St. Augustine, Florida and then we're playing it in Atlanta, which is the following night on August 2nd. And then we're playing it as Somergloom.

Hump Day News: Nice.

Weslie Negrón: The album [is] kind of similar to Space Force. It’s less than thirty minutes. Up to right now, I don't really know how much time our set is, but we should be able to put it together and play quickly, you know? But yeah, we're going to be playing the whole album.

Hump Day News: You seem like a very visually-minded artist as well and perhaps the band too. Do you guys have any audio/visual stuff going on [during the live show] or is it really just the pure band right out there rocking out?

Weslie Negrón: So it's probably just going to be the band raw. You know, as an independent band, we have to wear many hats and in this case I'm kind of like the one who manages everything and I'm managing social media, marketing, like the release, all this stuff…

Hump Day News: I know.

Weslie Negrón: Yeah. So I'm the one who's doing all that stuff. I would love to implement that…

Hump Day News: You even have the branding going with the Pig Hog…

Weslie Negrón: Oh yeah, yeah. I was at a music store today.

Hump Day News: I noticed that on Instagram as well – are they strings? What is that? Or is it cable?

Weslie Negrón: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The cables. Yeah, we partnered with them and they're taking care of us really well, amazing products too. But yeah, we would love to implement [audio/visual stuff]. There are some things that are in the works, so hopefully in the next few weeks we'll have something extra. But yeah, it's probably just going to be the raw band.

Hump Day News: Yeah, it's hard to travel with a big light show when you're on the road.

Weslie Negrón: Correct. Especially when we're from Puerto Rico and we have to travel all the way.

Hump Day News: Right. Yeah, that's a haul.

Do you know any bands on the bill that you're really excited about checking out while you're [at Somergloom]?

Weslie Negrón: For sure. We're playing on Saturday, which has SUMAC as the main headliner of the festival, and the main headliner of the show of the day. That's a big one, you know, to be honest. Like, that's kind of the crowd and the group of people that we want to be surrounded around.

For example, our rhythm guitar player, Omar (González), [is] a huuuuge fan of Aaron Turner, and SUMAC, and all his projects. He's very excited about it. We are totally excited about the whole bill. Morne is another one that we're looking into. Chepang is another one that we were also very excited about. Unfortunately we're not going to be in Somerville when they play, but I'm also very excited about The Keening. Great band. I saw them opening for Pallbearer last year. They were amazing. And GUHTS from New York as well. They're playing, I believe, on Thursday with Lesotho, which are friends of ours. There's a bunch of great bands on the bill, definitely.

Hump Day News: For sure. So with your tour finishing up in Somerville, what happens at the end of the tour? Do you go sightseeing for a little bit or is it really just back home immediately?

Weslie Negrón: Yeah, unfortunately, since, you know, this is not our main job, we all have to come back home and work…

Hump Day News: [Laughs] Like the rest of us…

Weslie Negrón: Yeah, exactly. So since the tour ends on a Saturday, everyone's flying back on Sunday. We're probably gonna have, like, a small breakfast or maybe not. We're probably just gonna sleep as much as we can [laughs], and then wake up and go to the airport.

I think one of the things that I really want to do with this tour and this record is to establish ourselves a little bit more. And hopefully, instead of [touring] every two years, we can [tour] yearly at least once a year. So that means that we're definitely going to be back, and hopefully we'll have a little bit more time to sightsee.

Hump Day News: Yeah, you know, to the East Coast one year, to the West Coast one year. Back and forth. I don't want to keep you too much longer, but at least one more question before I let you go. If we're visiting San Juan and we want to go listen to some music, what are some good clubs we should hit?

Weslie Negrón: Oh, wow. Well, it's interesting that you asked this question now because we're going through a very interesting transitional phase where venues are gonna be a little weird.

But yeah, you have La Respuesta, that's kind of the main underground one: 500 capacity venue, really good sound, best looking lights and all that stuff.

And then you have Club 77, that's more of a punk dive bar. A lot of people have played there. We're actually playing there in September as well.

You have Handlebar, which is more of an 80s kind of biker bar. There's a festival happening on Sunday, actually, over there. Twelve or thirteen local bands are going to be playing on two stages. Very fun stuff. For free. It gets packed every year. They bring about five or six hundred people. It's awesome stuff. Those are kind of like the main ones that we have as of now. I would definitely encourage everyone that's interested into looking into Puerto Rican metal to do their research. There's a lot of really cool bands here.

Hump Day News: Well, thank you, Weslie. This is awesome. We're looking forward to Somergloom. We're looking forward to Moths playing their entire new album Septem. It's going to rock. Maybe I will see you there.

Weslie Negrón: For sure. Definitely. Thank you. Thank you for the time and the interest. And yeah, we can't wait.

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