As intended by the mighty mammoths of the Pliocene epoch, Murfreesboro’s doom-metal-stoner rock trio Aye Mammoth continues its annual tradition of a new release each year, releasing its 10th annual local EP, Eternal, earlier in 2022. This not only validates rumors of Aye Mammoth’s metal endurance in the area, but canonizes the ancestral mammoth spirit in the annals of Murfreesboro tradition.

Thrashing Motörhead-style guitar riffage emerges from the very beginning, briefly joined by what sounds like a Univox synthesizer melody (it’s the bass or guitar through an effects pedal, likely), along with some stealthily placed reverb, and Aye Mammoth ramps up another hell of an entrance. Vocalist/guitarist Micah Loyed guides the fantastic, conquer-journey with determinedly ominous vocals, capable of punctuating Mammoth’s thrash with “Part the Skies/Eternal Light/Fires of Creation Rise.”

Rise!

The second half of the introductory track utilizes an instrumental roll call as Mammoth drummer Phil Stem digs in to support the two re-introductory solos. Loyed dusts off those high-register fingers, probably looking up to the heavens with metal-pains, for several measures . . .

Rise!

. . . leaving second-year Aye Mammoth bassist, Patrick Johnson (of PJ and the Bear), choosing not to respond with matching, fancy metal bass fingering, but, instead, shaking the freak’n walls off my house with the bump of a seasoned, team-player bassist well trained to achieve such fitting seismic dissonance with a metal band. Good God. It was playing on a phone the first time, too.

In lyric, our protagonist stands on the distant precipice, overlooking the land, rightfully his own.

“Chase the Blood” parodies a partying dance-punk feel in a metal kind of way before Loyed and Johnson duel fancy-finger solos. Our protagonist goes into kill mode at the kingdom’s throne, making “Locus Doom” an awesomely metal-ized number that inflects the universal constant: All that’s good battle all that’s evil.

Ultimately, there is victory for our protagonist amongst Loyed’s agonizing moans of down, down, down in the Supermegagraviton trilogy, a three-act Mammoth-metal suite encompassing tracks 4, 5 and 6, telling of our victorious protagonist’s new realm won, ramping up composition as Loyed’s vocals lean more towards a more gothic Layne Staley, late of Alice in Chains. “Supermegagraviton Act One: Event Horizon,” Pantera-thrashes a perspective on our protagonist’s accomplishments within the realm, a newly forming black hole, as gravity begins to pull down.

“Supermegagraviton Act Two: Gravity Well” channels the slightly faster thrash of Anthrax, furthering the next steps of implosion as Loyed seemingly sings into a fan. Johnson provides some nice bass work (suggestive of Tool’s Justin Chancellor) on “Act Three,” while, through the sludge metal, the hero becomes massless/weightless/lifeless/deathless, a blackening notion moving towards the absolute nothingness.

Finally, Eternal’s closing, “A Last Bastion,” casts a vivid soundscape, floating around that whole scene with a stellar, calming, instrumental with Loyed’s guitar work ranging from linear solos (in the style of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain”) to some peaceful picking (God Speed You Black Emperor-influenced, perhaps).

Aye Mammoth’s 10th annual Murfreesboro metal EP, Eternal, can be found on Spotify, iHeart and Apple Music and at ayemammoth.bandcamp.com, along with the group’s other nine journeys since 2013. Find more information on the band on the Aye Mammoth Facebook page.

“The Cthulu is strong in this one,” Richard Crowfoot, a metal fan from Australia, said of the 10th one.