The Molotovs vs The World: ‘If you hate our band, that’s fine’

To date, they’ve played more than 600 gigs in six years, graduating from pitching up “in the pissing rain” to scoring huge, high-profile support slots with many of their heroes, from the Sex Pistols to Blondie and Iggy Pop. Weller offered the band his studio to record their 2025 track Johnny Don’t Be Scared. In April they’ll play arenas, touring alongside rock’s current mouthy poster boy Yungblud. After years of graft, it’s all coming thick and fast for The Molotovs, but really their ethos of offering their peers an alternative to the one that’s always been in front of them remains the same. “We started doing gigs at Wimbledon Library in 2023 — £3 on the door, all ages, make it as accessible as possible — and I’d market it on Snapchat as a party because a lot of the kids would think that guitar music is a bit emo,” Mathew recalls. “But they’d get there, and they’d get into it. It would be their first experience of live music, and on the first month they’d be wearing their tech fleeces, and by the fourth month, they’d be dressing more like us.”