Monstrous

MONSTROUS is three brothers from Rhode Island: Led Gethway (guitar & vocals), Ken Gethway (bass & vocals) and Alex Gethway (drums & vocals). Sons of a Chilean opera singer and a guitarist/songwriter, they taught themselves to play (several instruments each) and started writing and playing songs before they were even teenagers.

As kids, the brothers lived across the street from a high school, and other kids hearing the music blasting out of the house started knocking on the door and asking to come in to listen. The Gethways soon had a rabid local following and so started playing gigs when they were 10, 12 and 16 years old.

They eventually recorded a CD on their own, bought an old white candy truck and took off on the road to tour the US and Canada. To pay for gas, they would pull into rest stops and gas stations along the highway and get people to buy their CD. The band spent almost four years living in the candy truck, playing gigs around the country and writing songs.

In 2004 the band ended up in Portland where they started getting a lot of support from fans and other bands who offered them places to crash and shower, so they eventually got their own place to live and record and self-released two full length records, Not a Studio Record and the double-CD The Revolution is Death (with 39 songs on it). They have sold more than 2,000 CDs on their own at gigs and gas stations around the country.

MONSTROUS has established a reputation as hugely gifted songwriters with a blistering live show that has made die-hard fans of The Dandy Warhols, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and many others.

With influences as disparate as Syd Barret, the Beach Boys, Forrest Carland, Lenord Cohen, the Beatles, the Ramones, Nirvana, Flaming Lips, & Lightning Bolt, MONSTROUS’ style careens from head banging punk to beautiful rich harmony pop to off-the-map weirdness and chaos.

They were signed to Howler Records in 2006 and will release their first studio album, Mother Nature’s Slaves, in September 2006.