Live at the El Rey

History

Formation

Mutemath started in 2002 as a long-distance collaboration between Paul Meany in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Darren King in Springfield, Missouri. The two had known each other from their work together in Meany's previous band Earthsuit. Occasionally Meany would receive instrumental demo CDs from King. Fairly impressed with his efforts, Meany contacted King and asked if he could mess with the demos a bit, adding some ideas of his own. King obliged and the two would set in motion a sort of songwriting ping-pong match that would carry on for several months.

In February 2002, King moved to New Orleans to work closer with Meany in hopes to at least turn their efforts into some kind of side-project. Calling it "Math", the two explored many of their shared influences ranging from DJ Shadow to Björk, yielding a lot of their earlier works to be more sample based electronica. After Meany's band officially broke up by that summer, King and Meany moved in together into a house they found in Mandeville, Louisiana where they spent all their time writing new songs and considering how to turn their side-project into a full band.

By 2003, they had recruited guitarist Greg Hill, another Springfield, MO, native and longtime friend of King's. All now living in Southern Louisiana, the three worked on expanding their collection of songs while broadening the sound to a more rock infused hybrid. With the addition of more of their collective band influences like the Police and U2 the music began to find a sound of its own. Meany took the early demos to friend and producer Tedd T, who fell in love at first listen. The trio continued to work on demos with Tedd T for a possible EP while playing shows on the side with different bass players experimenting with the idea of eventually becoming a four-piece.

After months of considering different options for their new venture, the group decided to do things on their own and officially changed their name to "Mutemath". Joining up with Tedd T and lawyer/manager Kevin Kookogey, they started an independent label Teleprompt Records. Within a couple months Teleprompt was able to put together a developmental-deal with Warner Music, and Mutemath's debut Reset EP would be released that Fall on Warner's CCM label Word Records in an attempt to capitalize on the group's fan base from Earthsuit. By December 2004, the band finally recruited bass player Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas to become the official fourth member. They began touring to promote the release while using popular social networking sites like MySpace to spread word of the group. As their fan base grew, the band began to see an increasing number of shows sell out by early 2005. By the end of that year, they joined The Music is Much Too Loud Tour opening for Mae and Circa Survive where they began to chronicle their shows and updated their video blogs on a nightly basis gradually attracting more and more people to the Mutemath ground-swell. The band sold over 30,000 copies of Reset EP before the album went out of print in 2006.

2006–2011

In January 2006, the band set out on a tour in support of their self-titled debut album. It was initially independently released in response to Warner Music Group's indecision on what to do with Mutemath's debut LP. So by late 2005, Teleprompt filed suit against Warner Music requesting Mutemath to be released from their contract while Teleprompt would proceed to promote and sell Mutemath's self-titled debut on its own. (see Teleprompt Controversy for more details).

The special edition of the album was only available as a "tour-only" release until it hit the Internet on Teleprompt's online store, selling more than 10,000 copies in its first month. Mutemath landed on the covers of Billboard and Pollstar being featured in Alternative Press, Paste, and Spin as well as on the MTV News program 'You Hear It First'. The group continued to tour vigorously, playing shows to crowds of thousands at festivals such as Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Van's Warped Tour, V Festival, CMJ Music Marathon in New York City, and Voodoo Music Experience in their hometown of New Orleans.

After months of legal wrangling with parent label Warner Bros. Records, Teleprompt settled litigation out of court in August 2006 with a re-negotiated contract with Warner.

WBR re-released the band's debut album Mutemath on September 26, 2006. The fully remastered album features reworked tracks from their Reset EP and a bonus limited-edition live EP. The album debuted at No. 17 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart.

The band returned to the road in early 2007 with opening dates for The Fray and Wolfmother in various cities and a brief headlining tour in Europe. Flesh And Bones Electric Fun, an exclusive live DVD was released on March 20, 2007, with an accompanying 43-city North American tour that ran through the first of May.

The band also received some unexpected publicity on American Idol when contestant Chris Sligh sang "Typical" on the show's Top 24 episode.

Mutemath's first music video, for "Typical", premiered on YouTube on March 21, 2007. The video features the band performing the song backwards. The video made it on the New York Post Hot List and registered more than 100,000 views in less than four days, going on to be viewed 4.7 million times as of December 2025. It took three weeks for Mutemath to learn their parts backwards. When asked whether singing backwards or drumming backwards was more difficult, Paul Meany answered, "Darren (the drummer) had it the hardest."

2011–present

In an interview with NOLA.com in November 2013, Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas said, "We have a lot of songs, and we're trying to whittle down what those main songs are going to be that seem to have a common thread between them all to make for this album." He goes on to explain that the production of Odd Soul was a unique process since Todd Gummerman was not yet a part of the band and that all guitar parts were written by all members of the band, who are all multi-instrumentalists. It is worth noting that the band had not yet released material written by Todd Gummerman, and the band has not discussed any writing processes including him, although certain posts in Darren King's Vine account show Gummerman present and active during the writing process.

When asked about what kind of influences and sounds the band has in mind for the future potential album release, Mitchell-Cárdenas stated, "Anything is fair play for us, as long as we can pull it off convincingly." Paul Meany also responded to a fan question via Twitter in January 2014 asking about the amount of music the band had written saying, "I can tell [you] we've written more songs for this record than for the past 3 combined."

On September 25, 2013, Darren King posted a vine of a sample of a new song the band was working on. This was followed on November 9 when King posted a short clip of Gummerman and what appears to be Mitchell-Cárdenas at work in the process of writing new material. In 2014 Mutemath begin playing new material live. Songs included "Monument", "Stratosphere", "Light Up" and "Used To".

MuteMath officially announced the title of their new album as Vitals on May 21, 2015, via their official Facebook page.

Vitals was released on November 13, 2015. The band toured in the US and Europe during the spring of 2016 on the Vitals World Tour in support of the album with special guests Nothing But Thieves and Paper Route. A planned Australian leg of the tour was cancelled so the band could join Twenty One Pilots on their Emotional Roadshow World Tour, which took place in Summer 2016.

After completing the tour with Twenty One Pilots, the band announced their first remix album Changes. The album consists of new versions of tracks from Vitals with contributions from Yachtclub, JT Daly, and Flint Eastwood and features the new title track as the single from the release. The album was released on September 23, 2016.

Religion

Mutemath has resisted being classified as a Christian band, even suing their record label Warner Brothers over being marketed as such. Paul Meany stated in an interview in 2006 that if his previous band Earthsuit (a Christian act) "inspired anything, it was what not to do." Drummer Darren King has also stated that he does not consider the band to be Christian. While Armistice explored themes of doubt and pessimism that the band has gone so far as to call "atheistic", Meany stated that the idea for the album Odd Soul was "loosely based on our upbringing in what I guess you could call eccentric Christianity," and King further explained that they wanted to celebrate their "weird religious roots." Rolling Stone has also noted this connection, calling them "kinda sorta a Christian rock band."

Band members

Current

Paul Meany – lead vocals, keyboards, piano, synthesizer, guitar (2002–present); bass (2002–2004; 2018–present); drums, percussion (2017–present)

Former

Darren King – drums, percussion (2002–2017)

Greg Hill – guitar, vocals (2003–2010)

Jonathan Allen – bass, keyboard, drums, guitar (2004, 2017–2018)

Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas – bass, guitar, keyboards, vocals (2004–2017)

Todd Gummerman – guitar, keyboards, synthesizer, percussion, violin, programming, vocals (2011–2018)

Touring

David Hutchison – drums (2017)

Collaborative contributors

Adam LaClave (2002–2018)

Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas (2017–2018)

David Hutchison (2024)

Timeline

Discography

Compilations and other media

"TOPxMM" – with Twenty One Pilots (2016)

"Allies" – Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2012 video game)

"Blood Pressure" – Asphalt 8: Airborne

"Chaos" – Aware 11

"Transformers Theme" – Transformers: The Album

"You Are Mine" appeared in the 2008 movies Never Back Down and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

"Spotlight (Twilight Mix)"

"Typical" appeared in The Stepfather (2009), and was also used in a Discovery Channel commercial

"Valium" – Soundtrack 90210 (2009)

"J Train (Math Remix)" is a remix of tobyMac's "J Train", on his remix album called Re:Mix Momentum

Awards and nominations

Awards

Dove Award 2005 Best Modern Rock Song - "Control".

Nominations

Grammy Award 2008 Best Short Form Music Video - "Typical".

Filmography

Flesh and Bones Electric Fun (Teleprompt/WBR, 2007) — DVD Release Date: March 20, 2007

Armistice Live (Teleprompt/WBR/Goodwin Films, 2010) — DVD Release Date: October 12, 2010

Tours

Early 2005 – The Reset Tour with Mat Kearney

Late 2005 – The Music Is Much Too Loud Tour with Mae and Circa Survive

Early 2006 – The Album Release Tour with Vedera, The Working Title, Under the Influence of Giants and Lovedrug

Late 2006 – Tour with Shiny Toy Guns, The Whigs, Jonezetta, and Club of the Sons

Early 2007 – SXSW & Flesh And Bones Electric Fun Tour with The Cinematics, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Club of the Sons, and one show with Wolfmother

Late 2007 – Tour with Eisley

Late 2009 – Armistice Tour

Late 2011 – Odd Soul Introduction Tour

Early 2012 – Odd Soul Tour

Early 2016 – Vitals World Tour with Nothing But Thieves

2016 – Emotional Roadshow World Tour with Twenty One Pilots

Late 2017 – Play Dead Tour with Colony House and ROMES