mantarochen – Wellness Ward
EP | 26/06/2026 | It’s Eleven Records
14:27 | 5 tracks | Cassette / Digital
Post Punk / Coldwave
Leipzig, Germany
This Is Not Hotel California
Although having always stayed within the realms of dreamy, melancholic, and atmospheric sounds, mantarochen succesfully defy genre borders. Their latest EP Wellness Ward is no exception to this rule. You may of course take categories such as post punk, coldwave, new wave, shoegaze, or even dark punk for references. Nevertheless, whenever you try to catch them, Sebi (music) and Diana (vocals) will escape your fangs.
Overwrought, Overtired, Overbored
Wellness Ward feels like heavy medication. On these five tracks, the numbness that comes with a strong tranquilizer or painkiller clashes with the realisation that something has to change. Something about oneself, something about one’s actions or environment, or maybe even something bigger, but something has to change for good. But there are those heavy limbs, that lack of drive and appetite, that damn paralysing insomnia. Life can be a cycle of grey tones when actually it should be colourful and boppy.
Heartbeats As Resistance
mantarochen invite their audience on a wild ride from recovery to desolation, from solitude to loneliness, from hope to frustration, from stagnation to action, and back, and back, and deep into the endless loop. Wellness Ward is a self-aware and reflected release, and it is both, brutally honest and yet empowering. Powered by a post soviet rock attitude and a neverending will to survive, mantarochen perform an elegant dance between pain, hope, and acceptance. And the track Soft Collapse really comes up to its title – listen for yourselves, you will love it.
Press materialy by courtesy of It’s Eleven Records
