We are excited to be playing a headlining show at The Chapel in San Francisco Saturday August 12 with Fantasy and Twin Dimensions.  Get your advance tickets here.

Wow, sorry everyone we haven't updated this website in a while.  We are beyond stoked to announce our 2LP EXPANDING MAJESTY is out now on Silver Current Records.  Here's our press blurb:

Like Stanley Kubrick, Mammatus are slowing in output as they forge surely and steadily down the path of their artistic legacy. Now, 8 years since their last release and 20 years since their inception as a band, Mammatus have recorded a sprawling masterwork. Expanding Majesty is not just a career defining album for the band but one that pushes the boundaries of 21st Century heavy music.

Formed by brothers Nicky and Aaron Emmert in 2005 in Santa Cruz, California, the same fertile Redwoods-and-sea incubator that produced fellow outer-region psych travelers Comets on Fire, Residual Echoes and The Fucking Champs, Mammatus have become increasingly reclusive in the years since their inception. They have also been honing their vision of mathy stoner rock, proto-new age, Kraut-prog and organic proto-metal into a panoramic, ever-expanding visionary world uniquely their own resulting in Expanding Majesty. Engineered by Phil Manley (The Fucking Champs/ Trans Am) at El Studio in San Francisco, four extended side-long pieces take the listener on a journey in which they experience reality only through the mind and vision of Mammatus. 

Bassist Chris Freels: The record’s theme is about being in awe of the nearly unbearable overwhelming beauty and energy of creation and existence. The theme came about naturally and revealed itself to us throughout the process. We are a very slow acting and methodical band and our creative process reflects that. We drew inspiration from our daily experiences; an epic hike, reading a great poem, listening to new music, our families, God, meditation, prayer, great books, bike rides, camping, great food, the forest, the ocean, the sky, the mountains.

The album opens with the 15+ minute ‘Expanding Majesty,’ as guitarist and singer Nicky Emmert strikes a single window-rattling guitar chord and breaks the darkness, shooting a ray of sonic light forth and letting it hang, glowing for a moment before Mammatus begins to assuredly introduce and weave together the album’s strands of DNA; kaleidoscopic guitar notes in infinite double helix, soaring 70’s analog synthesizers, wall-of-amps bass, 100ft drums and finally, no sooner than 71/2minutes into the song, huge and ethereal vocals in cascading harmonic layers.

Opener ‘Expanding Majesty’ in its long running, epic arc, travels from the meditative and joyful un-earthed flight of 70’s Kosmische godfathers like Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream to the kinds of tectonic sub-surface riffage pioneered by The Melvins and Sleep and these two poles of heavyocity maintain the balance of the albums 69 minutes. 

Despite the intensity of the music veering between darkness and light, the subject matter and intention of the music is strictly positivism, awe and wonder at the beauty of the natural world and the possibilities of expanded human consciousness. 

On the albums closing track “Beams of Light” Nicky sings: 

For the beauty of the earth

For the glory of the skies

For the sun in evening sets

And mornings rise

Oh the wonders of each hour

Of day and night

Hill, vale, tree, and flower

Stars of light

On the line where the sky and water meet

On beams of light

16 years ago and only two years into their existence, Mammatus essentially dropped out of the indie music rat race and were absorbed back into the Santa Cruz hills and valleys, walking away from an expanding touring career and the traditional non-stop release/ promote/ tour/ release cycle to find out if there was something more profound at the true heart of creativity and ‘being a band.’ In 2007, having just come off a successful US tour with Acid Mothers Temple, they retreated and reconfigured their musical life around the idea of peak creativity and peak quality of output completely off timeline or professional agenda. Their releases began to slow down and they began to create music with glacial precision.

Bassist Chris Freels:  Our main focus with the band became clear; make epic music, do it on our terms, only involve ourselves with the people we like, don’t get burnt out so we can keep the flame alive. For Expanding Majesty we began writing these songs over 8 years ago and each song went through multiple iterations before we ended up with these final recorded versions.

 There have been bands that have taken 8 years to release an album but very few who intentionally afford their creativity such time to patiently, steadily and mindfully work on a record and see it through to completion. 

The old-growth redwoods, the grassy hills and mountain tops, the crashing ocean, the blue sky into the black of space into the infinite universe are all the stuff of Expanding Majesty, both its subject matter and its genetic structure. It is a slow work, made of patience, tradition and love of craft, a master rendition of the beauty of our world, fantastic and incredible through the eyes of Mammatus. 

Mammatus is:
Aaron Emmert – Drums, Synth
Nicky Emmert – Guitar, Vocals, Synth
Chris Freels – Bass, Synth

Recorded and mixed by: Phil Manley at El Studio, San Francisco, CA.

Mastered by: Tim Green, Louder Studios, Grass Valley, CA.

Artwork: Cristian Eres

All music and lyrics by Mammatus

EXPANDING MAJESTY is distributed by Revolver/Midheaven in the US and Forte in Europe.  Click HERE to buy it from our Bandcamp page.

click here for tickets

Mammatus returns to Moe's Alley with our good buddies Harry & the Hitmen!  Gaze out with us and then dance your buns off to the jamtastic sounds of vintage R&B!  Tickets available here.

We are pleased to announce that we're making our way back into public consciousness, playing shows again and inching our way ever closer to our next record.  What better way to emerge from the foggy depths than with a FREE show?  Join us in San Francisco on Saturday August 14th at 3:00 pm.  That's right, an afternoon show so you can get your fun over with early and be home on your couch watching Star Trek before you poop out.  Our good friends Terry Gross will be providing additional psych/kraut/motorik rock for your enjoyment.  Bring your own party favors and prepare for fun!

Back in 2004 life was waaaay more chill.  Every Saturday we would awaken into a state of foggy haziness and meander down to El Frijolito in Watsonville for a breakfast of exquisite Mexican delicacies.  Once the previous evening's headiness was sufficiently coated in grease we would return to our garage in Corralitos and proceed to bang away at ridiculously loud heavy riffage for hours and hours on end, occasionally punctuated by meditative moments to breathe deeply and ponder the clouds.  One day we threw up a few microphones and recorded a 20 minute version of what eventually became Dragon of the Deep Part Two, except we didn't know there was a part one yet, so we just called it Dragon of the Deep.  It was tracked live, no overdubs, straight to cassette.  We sent it to Rocket and Holy Mountain who both liked it enough to release our self titled debut record in 2006.  Now sixteen years, 4 albums, and hundreds of live shows later, it seems part of the cosmic joke that we tried to put it online on 4/20/20 but failed because of technical difficulties.  Here ya go, free download, although you can donate more to the cause if you think it's extra rad.  Through the wafting clouds of tape hiss (LOTS of tape hiss) you can smell the dankness and grime of heady young men plodding away and chasing a rock n' roll dream that may still be coming true.....or is it? DIG IT, FREE DOWNLOAD

Back in 2012 or so we were hard at work mixing Heady Mental and getting into far out ambient soundscape type stuff that we didn't really know what to do with.  Eventually some of that ended up on Sparking Waters but a lot of it just got forgotten on a hard drive.  We also had two songs from our live set during the BRAIN era that we never perfected the recordings of.  So now here they are, plopped onto the internet as a digital download for your enjoyment.  Profits from this release will be donated to our local Santa Cruz chapter of Grey Bears who are doing good work taking care of elderly people during this horrific Corona Pandemic.  Head over to our BANDCAMP page to dig it. 

Not gonna lie, we're super pumped to play in the afternoon.  No staying up way past bed time getting bleary waiting to play.  We're gonna be home before bedtime!  Huge thanks to Subliminal SF for setting up this awesome show.  We'll be near the cooked meats if yer lookin for us. 

Iron Man Moving and Subliminalsf present 
"THE ELECTRIC KOOL AID BBQ TEST" 
Sunday August 5th - Afternoon Show / Free BBQ 
---- 
MAMMATUS 

OWL 

TERRY GROSS (members of trans am/triclops/peace creep) 

CARLTON MELTON 

---- 
Doors 2pm / Show 2:30pm (over by 7pm) 
$10 Cover / Free BBQ + Kool Aid 
---- 
BOTTOM OF THE HILL 
1233 Seventeenth Street, SF • 21+ 

Got a nice email today, "your entire sparkling waters album is so good guys i hope you're not dead"  Guess we gotta get out there and show we're still alive.  We've just been living, biking, working, biking, working, jamming....... for a while.  Got some new jams coming to fruition.  Spacin on the CREME.  Gotta show with OWL coming up, been trying to set something with them since they were teenagers.  TERRY GROSS is gonna play too, featuring our favorite tape wrangler PHIL MANLEY.  So if you're going to be in OAKLAND on June 29th you should come out, might be a while before you have a chance to see us again.  We're not dead!  We're living all over you.