Mammatus Announce Expanding Majesty Out June 23; Streaming Title-Track
I’m well aware that if you’re anything like me, no words I put here are going to make a damn bit of difference in slowing you down from checking out the 15-minute streaming-now title-track of Mammatus‘ impending 2LP full-length, Expanding Majesty. So have at it. I can’t even argue. The Cali psych-prog purveyors make the going sweet, with crisp tonality that reminds of where they were eight years ago on 2015’s Sparkling Waters (review here) without giving up the sense of journey from their earliest work, be it their 2006 self-titled debut (discussed here) or that record’s 2007 follow-up, The Coast Explodes.
Those two records are something of a longform/jam holy duology, but 2013’s Heady Mental (review here) began interweaving progressive textures into the proceedings, and listening to “Expanding Majesty” even as long as it’s been since Sparkling Waters — which, indeed, shimmered — the three-piece are still recognizable in their craft, dynamic and willingness to go, go, go where the song wants to go. I didn’t have a spot saved on my best-albums-of-2023 list for Mammatus when I woke up this morning, but I do now. It’s out June 23 through Silver Current Records.
Enjoy:
MAMMATUS return after 8 years with brand new album Expanding Majesty on Silver Current Records
A sprawling masterwork and a career defining album that pushes the boundaries of 21st Century heavy music.
8 years in the making, Santa Cruz California’s reclusive sons of tectonic riffage Mammatus return with Expanding Majesty, a 69 minute magnum opus of kaleidoscopic guitars, soaring analog synths, wall-of-amps fuzz bass and 100ft drums. 4 side-long pieces unfold across a double album in unstoppable riffs that span the meditative and joyful un-earthed flight of 70’s kosmische godfathers like Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream to the kinds of sub-surface thunder pioneered by Melvins and Sleep.
Like Stanley Kubrick, Mammatus are slowing in output as they forge surely and steadily down the path of their artistic legacy. Now, 8 years since their last release and 20 years since their inception as a band, Mammatus have recorded a sprawling masterwork. Expanding Majesty is not just a career defining album for the band but one that pushes the boundaries of 21st Century heavy music.
Formed by brothers Nicky and Aaron Emmert in 2005 in Santa Cruz, California, the same fertile Redwoods-and-sea incubator that produced fellow outer-region psych travelers Comets on Fire, Residual Echoes and The Fucking Champs, Mammatus have become increasingly reclusive in the years since their inception. They have also been honing their vision of mathy stoner rock, proto-new age, Kraut-prog and organic proto-metal into a panoramic, ever-expanding visionary world uniquely their own resulting in Expanding Majesty. Engineered by Phil Manley (The Fucking Champs/ Trans Am) at El Studio in San Francisco, four extended side-long pieces take the listener on a journey in which they experience reality only through the mind and vision of Mammatus.
The album opens with the 15+ minute ‘Expanding Majesty,’ as guitarist and singer Nicky Emmert strikes a single window-rattling guitar chord and breaks the darkness, shooting a ray of sonic light forth and letting it hang, glowing for a moment before Mammatus begins to assuredly introduce and weave together the album’s strands of DNA; kaleidoscopic guitar notes in infinite double helix, soaring 70’s analog synthesizers, wall-of-amps bass, 100ft drums and finally, no sooner than 71/2 minutes into the song, huge and ethereal vocals in cascading harmonic layers.
Opener ‘Expanding Majesty’ in its long running, epic arc, travels from the meditative and joyful un-earthed flight of 70’s Kosmische godfathers like Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream to the kinds of tectonic sub-surface riffage pioneered by The Melvins and Sleep and these two poles of heavyosity maintain the balance of the album’s 69 minutes.
Despite the intensity of the music veering between darkness and light, the subject matter and intention of the music is strictly positivism, awe and wonder at the beauty of the natural world and the possibilities of expanded human consciousness.
16 years ago and only two years into their existence, Mammatus essentially dropped out of the indie music rat race and were absorbed back into the Santa Cruz hills and valleys, walking away from an expanding touring career and the traditional non-stop release/ promote/ tour/ release cycle to find out if there was something more profound at the true heart of creativity and ‘being a band.’ In 2007, having just come off a successful US tour with Acid Mothers Temple, they retreated and reconfigured their musical life around the idea of peak creativity and peak quality of output completely off timeline or professional agenda. Their releases began to slow down and they began to create music with glacial precision.
There have been bands that have taken 8 years to release an album but very few who intentionally afford their creativity such time to patiently, steadily and mindfully work on a record and see it through to completion.
The old-growth redwoods, the grassy hills and mountain tops, the crashing ocean, the blue sky into the black of space into the infinite universe are all the stuff of Expanding Majesty, both its subject matter and its genetic structure. It is a slow work, made of patience, tradition and love of craft, a master rendition of the beauty of our world, fantastic and incredible through the eyes of Mammatus.
MAMMATUS
EXPANDING MAJESTY
Silver Current Records
Release date: 23rd June 2023 (2XLP)
Tracklist
1. Expanding Majesty (15:18)
2. By The Sky (15:17)
3. Foreveriff (22:38)
4. Beams Of Light (16:18)
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