Shit, man. Anybody got a line on a crash spot in Little Rock? Mutants of the Monster Fest — or if you’re on friendly terms you can go with Mutants Fest, like on the poster — has announced its initial lineup for May 16-18, with John Garcia as the first headliner. I’m not sure if it’s a solo show or with the full backing as John Garcia and the Band of Gold, but as noted below he’ll be doing Kyuss songs in addition to his own stuff and if the universe aligns just so, you might even get a track from the catalogs of Slo Burn, Unida or Hermano, the latter of whom have reissues out on Ripple now.

But Garcia is just the start and down the line through Weedeater and Telekinetic Yeti (tour partners again?), Spirit Adrift, Deadbird, Fistula, Rebelmatic, Flummox, Medicine Horse, Seahag and Adam Faucett, and the sense of curation remains strong. Mammoth Caravan will have a new record out by the time they play, and they might not be the only ones, but even if everyone showed up with nothing on the merch table (highly unlikely), it’d still be a riotous bill and there’s more to come since, you know, three days and all that.

Tickets are available through Last Chance Records as linked below. I’ll do my best to keep up are more names are added to Mutants of the Monster 2024. Here’s how the PR wire put it:

MUTANTS OF THE MONSTER FEST 2024 Reveals First Wave of Bands; Incl. John Garcia (ex-Kyuss), Weedeater, Telekinetic Yeti, Spirit Adrift + More!

Taking place in North Little Rock, AR at the Argenta Community Theater and Four Quarter Bar from May 16-18!

GET EARLY BIRD TICKETS HERE: https://www.lastchancerecords.com/

MUTANTS OF THE MONSTER FEST will return in 2024 to Little Rock, AR from May 16-18! The multi-day festival will take place in the Argenta Arts District and has revealed the first wave of bands, which is as follows:

JOHN GARCIA (Formerly of Kyuss playing all of the hits!)
WEEDEATER
SPIRIT ADRIFT
FISTULA
DEADBIRD
TELEKINETIC YETI
DEEPSTARIA ENIGMATICA
MEDICINE HORSE
ADAM FAUCETT
REBELMATIC
FLUMMOX
WHETHER
SEAHAG
OROROR
CRANKBAIT
MAMMOTH CARAVAN
SPORTS
DIREWOLF

Early bird tickets are now available HERE starting today through Monday, December 11. The pass will cover both stages for all three days of the event.

More bands will be announced soon – stay tuned!

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057305925445
https://www.instagram.com/mutantsofthemonsterfest/
https://www.lastchancerecords.com/

John Garcia, “Whitewater” (Kyuss) live at Desertfest New York 2022

Yeah, I realize that I say the same shit every time I post a Gimme Metal playlist, but this is a good god damn show. New Simple Forms to start, new Sandrider, Merlock, Acid King, Polymoon, REZN, some WyndRider and Strider — both reviewed in the last week or so — then on to Enslaved as a shift into meaner fare with Tribunal, These Beasts, They Grieve, Fuzzy Grapes and Mammoth Caravan touching on various points in gruff doom and sludge before I come on again to mouthfart or whatever it is I do around saying ‘thanks for listening’ and turn it over to an 18-minute finish from Clouds Taste Satanic, who’ll head to Europe this Spring to support the 2LP record they released today on Majestic Mountain. Good god damn show.

There’s a flow to it that I like, from the Pacific Northwestern takes of Simple Forms and Sandrider at the outset to the lumbering of Mammoth Caravan before that last voice track, it has a groove. Because it airs at 5PM on a Friday evening, I’m not always able to blast out the show while I try to keep up with the chat — that’s Sesame Street time, these days, and all volume conflicts are resolved by my being yelled at and turning down the music, putting my phone on the lowest volume and holding it to my left ear or stepping out to the back yard to get stoned and listening there for a bit — but Dean Rispler, who actually assembles the thing from the playlist I turn in, is a genius and I always know that he’s got it down when it comes to conveying the flow from one song to the next. I rely on that, and he nails it every time. It honestly makes me look forward to these Fridays more.

If you listen, I hope you dig it. Thanks for reading either way.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 02.03.23 (VT = voice track)

Simple Forms	Unprecedented Uncertainty	Unprecedented Uncertainty
Sandrider	Alia	Enveletration
Merlock	Onward Strides Colossus	Onward Strides Colossus
VT
Acid King	Beyond Vision	Beyond Vision
Polymoon	Set the Sun	Chrysalis
REZN	Possession	Solace
WyndRider	Creator	WyndRider
Strider	Midnight Zen	Midnight Zen
Enslaved	Forest Dweller	Heimdal
Tribunal	The Path	The Weight of Remembrance
These Beasts	Code Name	Cares, Wills, Wants
They Grieve	Wither	To Which I Bore Witness
Fuzzy Grapes	Sludge Fang	Volume 1
Mammoth Caravan	Petroglyphs	Ice Cold Oblivion
VT
Clouds Taste Satanic	Flames and Demon Drummers	Tales of Demonic Possession

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Feb. 17 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

Gimme Metal website

The Obelisk on Facebook

Little Rock, Arkansas-based sludge rollers Mammoth Caravan are set to issue their debut full-length, Ice Cold Oblivion, on Feb. 25. The album is the three-piece’s first release outside of a limited CD/tape Demo 2022 that featured the songs “Ice Cold Oblivion” and “Nomad,” which clearly they wound up pretty fond of since they open the album here in succession. Fair enough, particularly as the Monolordian buzz that grows so massive past the initial temporal displacement of effects looping in the title-track to act as a kind of welcome to the proceedings as a whole. With Evan Swift on guitar, Brandon Ringo on bass and vocals and Robert Warner drumming, Mammoth Caravan demonstrate immediately they know where they’re coming from, finding ground between the dug-in low-and-slow riffing of Crowbar and some of Egypt‘s bluesier rasp vocally — though Ringo changes it up to a cleaner style in the title-cut and later as well on “Periglacial,” and “Nomad” layers higher shouts over deathly growling, which also features in “Petroglyphs” (premiering below) so it’s not one thing or the other, either — as they instrumentally convey a largesse to suit the narrative of their moniker in the lyrics of the record about, wait for it, a caravan of mammoths.

Presented across two vinyl sides of three songs each, the 38 minutes of Ice Cold Oblivion make their primary impression in lumber, heft, and march. They’ve been compared to Eyehategod — 30 years later, if you play slow and scream at all, someone’s still gonna say you sound like Eyehategod; this is a thing about which I have surprisingly strong feelings — but that doesn’t account either for their more metal aspects throughout or the drifting mellow guitar that bookends “Petroglyphs,” so while it may be a case of those hearing the record trying to lump the band into a category where they don’t fit as neatly as some others might, in this case ‘sludge metal,’ it’s ultimately to the trio’s credit that even on their first offering they’re able to look outside microgenre and work in aspects of different heavy styles. They’re not about to start playing polka in 10-minute closer “Frostbite,” which grows plenty massive and encompassing enough in its final slowdown to be a worthy finish to all the pleistocene plod and snare bite cutting through, but neither should they be mistaken for being completely unipolar. As the philosopher Daniel Tiger reminds us: “you can be more than one thing.” And so they are, even as much as the consuming lurch of Ice Cold Oblivion is the backdrop against which those other elements play out.

They are, then, encouragingly malleable in their songwriting and the general quotient of nastiness on display at any given time. “Ice Cold Oblivion” and “Frostbite” do a bit of worldmaking as longer songs first and last, but the converted should have no trouble nodding along as “Petroglyphs” shifts after its quiet opening to harsh buzz and growls, tense and slow, then slower, then faster, then churning, then out on that same guitar figure that introduced it. Mammoth Caravan aren’t so much flying in the face of convention as choosing which versions of it they want to take for their own. This attitude and direction will serve them well as they move forward from here, but there’s something to be said for Ice Cold Oblivion‘s rawest moments as well, be it the sheer riff worship in the instrumental “Megafauna” or “Periglacial” daring toward Primitive Man-style ultradoom before changing to the aforementioned clean vocals en route to the fadeout of guitar and bass that leave the drums that started it. One way or the other, they effectively bring to life a sound like nature trying to kill early humans, and really, seeing how it all turned out, who could blame it for trying?

Below you’ll find the video for “Petroglyphs,” which is wonderfully DIY at the playground, kid finds an eyeball, and so on. It’s the third single from Ice Cold Oblivion behind “Frostbite” and “Nomad” — though obviously the demo of the title-track is streaming as well — and begins to show the flora growing alongside all that crushing fauna in the epoch in which the band here reside. To make it as plain as I can: it is very heavy. You can’t say you weren’t told in advance.

Enjoy:

Mammoth Caravan, “Petroglyphs” video premiere

Video shot and edited by Machete Eddy.

Sludge/Doom Metal trio MAMMOTH CARAVAN will release debut/concept album Ice Cold Oblivion February 25, 2023 on CD, digital, cassette, and vinyl formats.

Ice Cold Oblivion was recorded, mixed and mastered by Jason Tedford at Wolfman Studios.

Pre-order: http://mammothcaravan.bandcamp.com/album/ice-cold-oblivion

Track Listing:
1. Ice Cold Oblivion
2. Nomad (feat. Mat Johnson)
3. Petroglyphs
4. Megafauna
5. Periglacial
6. Frostbite

Line-Up:

Brandon Ringo – Bass/Vocals
Evan Swift – Guitar
Robert Warner – Drums

Mammoth Caravan, Ice Cold Oblivion (2023)

Mammoth Caravan on Facebook

Mammoth Caravan on Instagram

Mammoth Caravan on Spotify

Mammoth Caravan on Bandcamp