Article By: Pat ‘Riot’ Whitaker ‡ Edited By: Leanne Ridgeway
The Pacific Northwest of the U.S. has long generated its very own particular breed of bands with their own defining sound. I could rattle off a laundry list of acts, but a few right off the top of my head would be (the) Melvins, Red Fang, and Heiress. In fact, those three are nice jumping-off points for the band we are here to discuss, Portland, OR’s Mammoth Salmon.
It has been a little over two weeks since Mammoth Salmon, aka Paul Dudziak (vocals, guitars), Matt Howl (bass), and Chad Walter (drums), released their five-song ‘Magnetic Fields Of Radiant Light‘. In the grand scheme of things, two weeks isn’t much, I know, but I think YOU should know about the band and their release. Let’s begin by inquiring about the style(s) of music you like… or don’t like.
Do you like sludge? Do you like post-hardcore? Do you like aggressive stoner doom-tinted heaviness with the ability to render you asunder its pummeling density? If you answered “yes” to any or all of these, then you qualify as the type of person that may absolutely love this band and album.
See, this effort is the very embodiment of these aural factors, and then some. That “then some” is the added element of ambient psychedelia and what some of us refer to as “Outersound”. That itself alludes to heady or trippy factors present in the music and that is most definitely applicable to much of the content here.
The five songs here are a mish-mash of rumbling densities, where a lot of aural ground is covered. The shortest playing time of any song is a little over seven minutes in length, so there’s ample time to navigate and explore where the trio wants things to go. From the rollout of the hypnotically heavy “Apotheosis“, a number rife with Unsane-ish qualities, the full-on crush begins. It is taken to the max in other tracks like “Malestrom Of Discontent“, but it’s when the atmospheric additives are applied that Mammoth Salmon truly excels.
For the record, those are found in abundant quantities on the cuts “Mortals“, the fantastic “Black Moon Ritual” and enthralling title track, “Magnetic Fields Of Radiant Light“. The latter two, which run back to back, provide a gut-wrenching deluge of psyche-tinged stoner doom you will not soon recover from.
I suggest you subject yourself, your very soul in fact, to Mammoth Salmon‘s ‘Magnetic Fields Of Radiant Light‘ right this instant. You can do that now via the Bandcamp embedded stream of it below, where it is also available as an NYP (Name Your Price) item. One that you are definitely going to want in your collection.
