Mammatus is a band from the outer reaches of Santa Cruz County, California. Taking our name from the heaviest cloud found on our home planet, Mammatus harness instruments and amplifiers with the brave intent of transforming the natural beauty and massive fury that lies in the earth into acoustic energy. The sound that results from these explorations is an aural adventure, a sonic quest through the outer reaches of the natural and spiritual worlds. Mammatus use ROCK music in an effort to communicate with our fellow humans, because it the most overwhelmingly exciting and powerful sound we have discovered so far. We ROCK because we must! There is no medium more mind melting, more body banging, more…AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRHHHHHH!!!! than pure, LOUD, HEAVY, INSANE ROCK AND ROLL! That is why we must use every resource available; push our minds and bodies to the outer limits, so that we can make sure we are exciting ourselves and others with new, creative, pure, adventurous ROCK music. We play it how we like it, really really loud, lots of ridiculous guitar leads, thick heavy headbangin' riffs, proggy groovin', and plenty of weird stuff. We're doing the best we can, honestly. We love to rock and we do it for YOU. We want you to feel this thing that we feel. Just let yourself smile as wide as you can, let your mind EXPLODE! DANCE! JUMP! SCREAM! We're exploring. Rock and roll exploring. Let's go exploring together.
Mammatus was born in the beginning of 2005 and started out playing in living rooms, warehouses, bowling alleys, and dive bars in Santa Cruz County. We had an EPIC tour of the US with the New Thrill Parade in the summer of 2005 playing living rooms, basements, rooftops, barns, abandoned car lots, and even one huge arena! We swam in many rivers; played lots of empty shows in freakish hell holes; climbed into the heart of the Appalachians; 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. After that we started getting a little more attention opening up for bigger bands in San Francisco. We recorded our first self titled album in our garage studio and it was released internationally by Holy Mountain and Rocket Recordings. The album was about dragons and wizards battling on the sea in the never ending fight between good and evil. It got some good reviews and we got to play cooler shows.
In the late summer of 2006 Mammatus returned from a very exciting US tour with our ultimate bros and label mates Residual Echoes. Eager to return to the ocean with which we share a spiritual kinship, we spent the remaining months of summer boogie boarding and finding secret spots along the coast to sit and think in. With the overwhelming majesty of the sea fresh in our minds, Mammatus began slowly tracking another album in our home studio, the Silent Planet. Wishing to explore more complex, dare we say progressive arrangements; the four songs that came out of these sessions left four minds almost completely drained yet excited and fresh. We emerged with The Coast Explodes, an homage to God's mighty ocean, ripe with thick swirling riffs, up-tempo sonic freakouts, harmonious soundscapes and even an acoustic guitar and flute campfire jam. Lyrically, Mammatus continue to explore the ongoing battle between light and darkness, and we continue the battle saga that began in our first album with Dragon of the Deep Part Three. With The Coast Explodes, the overall feeling and message we four dudes wish to convey is that we love the earth, we love to rock, we feel it to our core, and most of all we want each and every person that hears our music to feel it as well.
As soon as The Coast Explodes was released we went on our third US tour opening for Acid Mothers Temple. This exposed us to a few thousand more people who had never heard of us before and the reception we got was quite enthusiastic. This was the height of "The Wizard Phase" of Mammatus. We all dressed in flowery robes and waved giant redwood staffs we found while hiking in the woods. Cheap (but effective) fog machines, massive quantities of incense, a bubble gun, and our own beardo weirdo wizard created a very strange and far out atmosphere that made up our live show. Many people didn't seem to get it, and most of our live reviews were confused rants about how rock bands shouldn't be silly or dress up or speak exclusively though delay pedals. The last Mammatus Wizard Show was December 1st, 2007 at the Love's in Heat Records festival in Santa Cruz. Seven wizards joined us onstage for the largest sensory overload ever staged at the Santa Cruz Vet's Hall. It was the end of an era.
Mammatus are a trio again. We have been writing new songs for a few months and we are very excited about them. We're starting a record label in order to expose people to all the rad music being made in Santa Cruz County. It is called WonderQuest, and our first two releases will be Misty Mountain (solo project from Nicky of Mammatus) and The New Thrill Parade (the most far out goth/punk/glam/psych/weirdo band ever to wear diapers, produced by Aaron Emmert of Mammatus.)
GET YOUR OWN MAMMATUS T-SHIRT OR HOODIE! CLICK TO ENTER THE ((WONDERQUEST//MAMMATUS MERCH CENTER))
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