MAMMATUS "After a few months of more dicking around downstairs, we still didn't have a name. We knew we wanted just one word that would reflect a certain powerful energy, so we drafted a list of hilarious words that no one in their right mind would ever call a band. One of my favorite rejects was 'Dude.'" Formed at the beginning of 2005, Santa Cruz' Mammatus enter the realm of heavy drone with an excess of fuzz and wah-noise. Mammatus' S/T debut album consists of four long tracks, the longest, "Dragon of The Deep Part 2" clocks in at staggering 25 minutes and combines the best of early 70's psyche rock with contemporary sludge rock -think Hawkwind meets Sleep and Dead Meadow meets Ummagumma-era Pink Flyod. If you love the aforementioned greats, then you'll like Mammatus as well. Their debut full-length is out on Rocket Recordings in Europe and available through Holy Mountain in the US & Canada. Words | Aaron So after being asked by Roadburn to write "a few paragraphs about making the debut album by Mammatus" I realized that I myself am a little foggy as to the details of the whole process. The band just kind of happened; nothing was planned or organized in any way. Indeed, I'm not sure if any of us realized that this band was in fact on its way to doing anything until after the fact. In order to comprehend the evolution of the past year we must go back. Back to a more naïve time, back to the fall of 2004... Nicky, Chris and I had been playing in a band quite different from Mammatus, more of a rock and roll a la Dinosaur sort of band that had been through a million different formations over a period on and off of about four years. In August of '04 we played a handful of shows going up the coast to Seattle. Upon our return, it was clear to everyone involved that something needed to change. We weren't comfortable with the name of the band or the music we were playing. Having cut our teeth on all things classic rock, and longing to reflect our growing love of being "far out" and heavy, we decided to chill for a while and see what happened. This was, to tell the truth, nothing for some time. We were all broke and trying to seek out a living off our meager jobs, leaving little time to jam. Some time in this period Nicky and I were messing around in the studio under our house, banging out some of the old surf tunes we used to play in our pastoral high school garage band days. After slowing down a song previously known as 'Return from Mars' we finally realized the direction we wanted to be going in. This riff eventually became the first section of "Dragon of the Deep Part Two." Now that we had an inkling of what was to take place, Chris started playing bass with us and we fleshed out the rest of the song. We played a show at the Cube, a dirty living room by the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz, still without a name for our baby dragon. Soon it became apparent that we would need a second guitar, and there was really only one option. It isn't very easy to play music with someone who isn't already your bro, so we got our best bro. Mike and Chris had played together in the crust meets Peni band Kevorkian Christmas Special, and he had recently got a new green line six delay pedal, so he was in. Now Dragon of the Deep had some excellent riff trading and a far out droning middle section. We were stoked, to say the least. After a few months of more dicking around downstairs, we still didn't have a name. We knew we wanted just one word that would reflect a certain powerful energy, so we drafted a list of hilarious words that no one in their right mind would ever call a band. One of my favorite rejects was "Dude." Nicky told us about these massive bubbly clouds that appear near tornados and thunder storms, and after seeing pictures of these clouds we knew we were Mammatus. So on March 20, 2005 Mammatus played their first show in our garage studio, the Silent Planet, with some local heavy legends called Druids. We never really decided to record an album, since we knew no one who would want to put it out. We hardly even knew anyone who would let us play shows, so it didn't seem like a huge priority. Since Mike lived in San Francisco and the rest of us lived in the sleepy farm community of Corralitos two hours away, it was difficult to get us all in the same room at once. On the rare occasion that this did happen, usually on a Saturday, we recorded what was going on using Pro Tools on a crappy old Mac with some equally crappy outboard preamps. After playing our songs over and over for a few more months, we eventually had the basic tracks of "The Righteous Path Through the Forest of Old," "Dragon of the Deep," and "Song of Tundor," which later became "Dragon of the Deep Part One" since it told a kind of prequel to the same story addressed in part two. Nicky and I then got far out and did some guitar overdubs and synth wanking on a few late nights, and that was it. I then pushed each individual instrument track back out various amplifiers and recorded the ambient room to liven up the flat digital sound as much as I could, but it still sounds pretty weak to me. Because of the fact that we were [and still are] very inexperienced and broke, the album definitely sounds home made in every sense of the word, good and BAD. We only had six inputs, and since we insisted on tracking everything in the same room, this meant the only mics on the drums were a kick and two overheads. Many engineers will tell you that since this is the simplest set up and because it most accurately duplicates the sound of live drums that it is the most desirable drum micing technique. However, we were all in one room, one small very loud and reflective room. As a result, the overwhelming volume of three amplifiers freaking out pushed its fair share into the drum mics. This left the drums sounding thin and puny. If I were to turn them up, the rest of the instruments just got louder, burying the drums further still.This was only slightly overshadowed by the fact that I was 22, not really sure of what I was doing, and without the comfort of any decent piece of equipment whatsoever. Now I'm 23 and I know just a slight amount more, but we'll probably get to record the next album in a real studio, so no worries. All this being said, we had never recorded anything like this before and we were all quite excited about what we were hearing. By now it was summer, and summer means time to tour. We loaded up the Super Dude [aka the Mammavan] with our gear and a bunch of smelly freaks from Santa Cruz called the New Thrill Parade, and hit the heat. Armed with some hand packaged CD-Rs of two of the songs we had been working on; we swam in many rivers; played lots of empty shows in freakish hell holes; climbed into the heart of the Appalations; rocked the deep ghetto of Baltimore; carried all our cabinets up four flights of ancient crumbling stairs to play on top of an apartment building in Brooklyn; sat around wondering why shows got cancelled; got kicked out of a living room by a gun waving chef in Wisconsin, and participated in an anarchist rave in a hundred year old dome barn in a corn field in South Dakota. Upon our return we found that after playing every day for five weeks we performed all our songs much better than we had recorded them. I think a bit of all of us wanted to do the whole thing over again but we were also sick of the whole process and just wanted to be over it. In the end, we did end up re-recording "Dragon of the Deep Part One." I had a broken ride cymbal, so it sounds kind of weird. Then, to fill up space, we got far out and did some wanking that became "The Outer Rim" featuring Amitai Heller of the New Thrill Parade doing some authentic Israeli ululations. Chris played Djembe and I banged on a banjo tuned to open D as if it were a drum. Nicky and Mike did what Nicky and Mike do, space out on guitars. This is the only track on the album where I got a little creative in the mix, using some backwards guitar and a bunch of phase shifting and delay on the percussion. Now we had a record in the can. By this time we had mooched some label contacts through our friends in Residual Echoes. I had recorded an album for them that was [and still is, I hope] to be released on Rocket Records in England. I sent our two song demo CD with the finished copy and they wet their trousers. They had hired Arik Roper to do the artwork, based on a concept we had in our heads before the first tracks had even been recorded. This to us was the key reason Rocket ruled the land. They are also, like us, completely nutso geeky psych prog metal freak lovers, so we had kindred spirits across the sea, which seemed hilariously novel given our below underground status at the time. However, I wondered about their US distribution, through Cargo records and asked John at Holy Mountain what we should do about it. He decided to license and release the US version, which I think saved our asses quite a bit. When all is said and done, we are very blessed and very lucky that we got to make a record at all. From a very early age it has been my sole ambition to be able to hold a piece of vinyl in my hand and know that I had manipulated every part of it. I had never been sure this goal would be reached until the day we got a copy the test pressing in the mail. Now that we have a record out I think the idea has finally settled in that we are, in fact, a REAL LIVE BAND and now is the time to really get to work. Its just our first record, it has flaws, we're still learning how its done, a small handful of people have heard of us, even fewer have been to our shows, so a long, winding, Righteous Path looms ahead of us. We will take up our swords and slay all that hinders our way in the name of all that is true, just, and pure.