Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard - Y Proffwyd Dwyll (2016) / 85%

Carl's Sagan Deep Fried Burrito

“What a fucking stupid name” is quite possibly what almost everyone would say if I mention the subject of this review and I mean, I can’t blame them even if they’d be wrong. I see it more as a parody of those super boring “dank” weed themed stoner bands who are trying to write the next Dopesmoker while working night shifts at a suburban convenient store. That welsh band is much more than that and their second release that can be googletranslated to “The Proof of Fraud” or “the False Prophet” based on what MA says is an austral voyage to an unknown and probably better not to be discovered aural plane.

Compared to their debut album, they decided to extend the tracklist to six numbers instead of having one long half an hour song, it’s a wise decision since it’s a bit more listenable that way. MWWB are a hard band to classify, I think it could be summarized as “psychedelic doom metal” and we could call it a day...

Oh you’re still here? Sure, I’ll continue. Well, the first element that really came to my mind with that band is the dichotomy between the vocals of Jessica Ball and the immense riffs displayed by the two guitarists. Ball’s voice is soft, feminine and melodic while the guitars are thundering and massive. This is The Gathering - Mandylion era or SubRosa maximized with a lot of vitamins and protein powder, probably some Red Bull mixed Vodka too. It’s big and it’s like me after I drank too much energy drink and I’m crashing down, it’s quite slow, heavy and hypnotized.

The songs, all between six and ten minutes, are dense with otherworldly effects that are really wrapping the normal metal instrumentation in a special vibe. It’s like if you deep fry a meat lover burrito in duck fat, it’s a bit too much at times and it can overwhelm your senses but it’s consistently tasty. With their spacey prowess and their desire to be unequivocally uncompromising, I guess we could call them the doom metal Mithras.

All in All, Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard are good at putting the doom/stoner tropes in the garbage, putting the garbage can on fire and throwing it into a star gate where it can come back with a symbiotic entity who’s actually chill as fuck and just likes to blaze it while watching old Carl Sagan documentaries.