Slomatics and Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard are each modern day titans, shaking the world with high-caliber sludge/doom until the earth cracks and fissures. However, when the two come together the result takes on a galactic scale, creating a soundtrack that invites the devourer of worlds to phase in from dimensions unknown and swallow the our planet and all who inhabit it. "Totems" is the new LP from these two juggernauts - it's a split album in the literal sense, but they've opted to deem it a "collaboration" instead and upon listening it becomes clear why. The songs from both bands meld together perfectly creating a consistent, killer, all-consuming behemoth of a sound. It starts with Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard's half which is composed of two songs, the first of which opens on a dark, retro film score synth before falling into the ever expanding jaws of doom. It's almost a bit cheesy, but that opening keeps you intrigued enough to get drawn in, then by the time the ethereal vocals start up you've been engulfed by the massive, cosmic sound with hammering rhythms and riffs heavy enough to have their own gravity. The backend just feels so deep it's like falling into a bottomless pit. Synths come in and out to breathe touches of terror and ambient astral noise. On Slomatics half they summon forces much in the same vein, but this time with even more atmospheric synths calling you to surrender yourself to the abyss. It feels like less of a shift to a new band, and more like they are building on the earlier tracks in a natural progression. They've got three songs here, two overwhelming doom opuses, that sandwich a dreary piano/synth piece titled "Silver Ships Into The Future" that seems to revel in lament for the end before the last track of the album. "Masters Descent" closes it up and it really feels like a culmination of everything that came before, but swelling to absolutely epic proportions. With a pair of bands like this I expected the result to be good, but not THIS good. This shit is on another plane of existence, calling out at a metaphysical level - it's the kind of stuff you'll regret skipping out on, so don't! -Brandon
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