Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard, (great name!), are a doom metal band from the UK, and this is their second album.
Do you like massively heavy riffs accompanied by angelic female vocals? Of course you do! After all, you’re a discerning doom connoisseur, and what’s not to like? Y Proffwyd Dwyll offers up 48 minutes of this formula, and it’s one that seems to work very, very well.
The music is heavy, dirty and rooted in sludgy doom metal, full of all kinds of different levels of filth, distortion and grime. However, this is not a band that are purely concentrating on how heavy they can play. The music is not without nuance, and there’s an air of the post-metal about this in addition to the obvious doom aspects of their sound. It’s as if Cult of Luna were mired in doom metal’s traditional heaviosity, alongside their free-roaming exploratory delivery.
Extra sounds/keyboards/effects are incorporated into the band’s sound too, enhancing and captivating in equal measure.
This is well-written stuff, and there’s more than enough depth and longevity here in the music alone, and that’s before you even take into account the extraordinary vocals of their singer. She has an extremely impressive voice, capable of delivering layer upon layer of emotion and feeling. She comes across as an ethereal mix of Julie Christmas and Liv Kristine, and delivers one Hell of a performance on this album.
For all the attention that the luscious vocals undoubtedly draw though, (and it’s well-deserved attention), it’s the combination of these and the well-composed music that makes Y Proffwyd Dwyll such an impressive proposition. This is a holistic package; the heavy music, the angelic vocals and the added effects all merge into one seamless mass of emotive doom metal that’s so easily endearing you’ll wonder where this band have been all of your life.
Well, I loved this. No hyperbole or fancy metaphors, nothing like that – I just loved it.
Essential.
As Garth would say “Schwing”.