Mammuthones

Part of Rocket Recordings’ new Black Hole Series, the new album from Mamuthones sets itself up a residence in the altar at the end of the world. Funereal, ritualistic, and sunk into a deep black darkness, the album maps the shape of our scars. It carves its woodcut cadences into the backs of the speakers. As much has we might need or crave lightness in this world, it’s perhaps apt that Mamuthones reflect the ink black bile roiling beneath the surface these days. The sounds on From Word To Flesh land in stark contrast to the band’s last album, a vibrant, dance-infected affair that felt untouched by the kind of curse that’s at the core of the new album. They shed the shine of that album and retreat towards the atmospheric ache of their earlier works.

To be fair, it’s been a hell of a worldwide ride since 2018, and more than a few disappointments, derangements, and disillusions have been at work in the interim. The weight is felt throughout the record, darkening the door as the band scrapes the senses on “Burn From The Inside.” Some light does enter the caverns as they progress, bobbling a bit of rhythm on “Can’t Be Done,” and swaying on icy winds through the funeral folk of “Before You Leave,” but the album crawls back into the dark after these respites. It’s found sweeping the noise floor on “A Symmetry of Faith,” and turning their previous dalliances with rhythm into an unsettling, unblinking standoff with anxiety on “Son of Myself.” The band exits the record in repose; a gothic, yet atmospheric escape into the ether. The record helps usher in the new series’ focus on outsider impulses with a keen understanding of the assignment, damaged, but never dreary.

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