The Molotovs have released their debut album Wasted On Youth through Marshall Records, closing January with the record that years of relentless gigging have been building towards.
The London siblings — Mathew and Issey Cartlidge — have made grassroots venues central to their development. Rather than appearing from nowhere with a debut campaign already assembled around them, they have spent years playing rooms around the country and building their audience the slow way.
That background matters to Wasted On Youth. Across 11 tracks, the record draws on punk, new wave, indie and garage while addressing the pressures surrounding young people: social media, expectations, apathy and the desire to push back against all of it.
A debut built on the road
The opening ‘Get A Life’ made the album’s attitude clear earlier this month, but the wider record is intended as more than a collection of fast guitar songs. The band have described it as a kind of youth manifesto — an attempt to turn frustration into something positive rather than simply documenting it.
They are also putting their touring philosophy where their mouth is. Their January run has focused heavily on independent venues, the same ecosystem that allowed the band to develop in the first place.
That is precisely why The Molotovs belong in the Grassroots section of Imminent Infinity. Grassroots does not have to mean unknown. It means recognising the route artists take before the bigger stages arrive — and remembering that those stages do not exist without the smaller ones underneath them.
