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Mammoth Mammoth - Volume IV: Hammered Again
Released by: Napalm Records
Released on: March 27th, 2015.
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Mammoth Mammoth unleash their fourth album, this time around on Napalm Records and entitled, appropriately enough, Volume IV: Hammered Again. What makes that appropriate? Well, it's their fourth album and a lot of the songs here are about getting hammered. So yeah, if the shoe fits… I mean, there's a naked woman smoking weed on the front cover. That kind of sets certain expectations, right?
For those unfamiliar with Mammoth Mammoth, they hail from Melbourne, Australia and are comprised of Mikey Tucker on vocals, some dudes named Pete Bell and Cuz (a.k.a. Ben Couzens) on bass and guitar respectively. Frank Trobbiani rounds out the band on drums.
The complete track listing for Hammered Again is:
Life's A Bitch / Lookin' Down The Barrel / Electric Sunshine / Fuel Injected / Black Dog / Promised Land / Reign Supreme / Sick (Of Being Sick) / Hammered Again / High As A Kite
The opening track kicks the door down and shows a big, nasty Turbonegro influence - and that's not a bad thing. It's fast, nasty and straight to the point with guitars up front and a super catchy, albeit very simple, chorus anchoring it all. That sound continues in to the next track, Lookin' Down The Barrel, which works some Nashville Pussy style southern rock into the mix as well as some Motorhead stylings too - this is good stuff. This album starts off fast and raw and dirty and maintains that sound throughout, with one exception. No pretentious noodling here, just balls out dirty shirt style rock n' roll.
Electric Sunshine works a serious stoner rock vibe into the mix, channeling the likes of Fu Manchu and maybe a bit of Clutch too. It's got a heavy groove and it's some seriously catchy, fuzzed out stuff. Fuel Injected puts the pedal to the metal again and it throws a pretty massive riff in your face from the opening barrage with Tucker's snarly vocals keeping this track nice and scrappy. Black Dog is a track about what happens when you go 'snowblind', so you can sort of figure out what that's all about, and yeah, that Motorhead influence is back in spades (ha!). Promised Land gets a bit sludgier than what we've heard on the album prior, but it fits in here well as Motorhead is pushed aside for doomy poundings, but at the same time while these guys wear their influences on their sleeves, they definitely do have their own sound.
Moving right along, Reign Supreme, the shortest track on the album at 2:44, shifts gears again and goes at it fast and with some seriously pounding drums. Tucker growls his way through the track and we here some more Turbonegro creeping its way in here. Sick (Of Being Sick) is a song about the toils of excess, hard living and going over the top. The opening riff sounds a bit like Supernaut's instantly recognizable guitar lick but it stops short of completely stealing it - but Sabbath would seem to have been on the band's mind when they recorded this one.
Hammered Again is the penultimate track and also the title track, and it's a good one with a nice backbone in the bass and drums over which Tucker and Cuz are able to do their thing. It's all about having a reputation for being high and being, as the title implies, hammered again. High As A Kite brings the album to a close in an interesting and somewhat atypical way compared to the nine tracks that came before it. At over nine minutes in length it's basically twice as long as anything else on the record and it's a slow, grinding, bluesy number that actually seems pensive and reflective, contrasting the other songs' penchant for celebrating excess with lyrics that offer up a more mature approach to drugs and booze and all that fun stuff. It's essentially their Freebird, except it's heavier and it probably won't get as many frat boys singing along to it.
For the most part though, this is first in the air good time rock n' roll. Mammoth Mammoth may not be reinventing the wheel with their sound but they put their own stamp on things and they do what they do well. These guys are starting to make a good name for themselves and this album proves they deserve it.
Check out the video for Lookin' Down The Barrel below (and geek out on the whole Chris Holmes/W.A.S.P. thing they do here!):
