Mental Gymnast Brings a Scattered Lineup Together on "Mental Gymnast" EP

Mental Gymnast began as a conversation at The Fest, when frontman Adam Gecking pitched longtime friend Scotty Sandwich on a band built around the energy of Ruiner. That casual origin shapes everything about how the project has grown since: an EP written over group chats, recorded across different cities, by a lineup still finishing its debut without ever being in the same room together.

The band's roster reads like a map of the hardcore scene itself. Scotty Sandwich, who runs The Sandwich Shoppe studio and has played in Wolvesx4 and Almost People, wrote the music and sent it to Adam, who drove to Durham to record vocals over it. Erica Clayton, brought on specifically because Adam wanted the project to include more than an all-male lineup, plays bass, with a background spanning Binary Heart and Freya Wilcox and the Howl. Chris Ruckus adds keys and gang vocals, Jon Greco rounds out the lineup ahead of this second EP, and drummer Sam completes the band as the one member nobody else has actually met in person yet.

The EP's lead single takes on cruelty and cynicism directly, arguing for kindness and sincerity over the modern instinct toward "brutal honesty," even while the song itself flirts with nihilism along the way. That tension gives the track real friction rather than a simple, tidy message.

Recorded remotely across multiple cities, with Sandwich's studio serving as the project's technical hub, the EP carries the loose, collaborative energy of musicians who trust each other's instincts even without shared physical space. Adam has joked the band is tragically bad at naming things; both EPs share the same self-titled tag, but that self-deprecation doesn't extend to the songwriting itself.

Built from scattered pieces and years of overlapping scene connections, "Mental Gymnast" asks listeners to trust a band still finding its full shape, and the songs make a genuinely convincing case that it's worth the wait.