Who can ever forget that moment in Penelope Spheeris’s The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years, when then-W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes did an interview while drunkenly floating in a swimming pool, presumably guzzling vodka while his embarrassed mother sat nearby? Although that interview was staged, it remains one of the defining portraits of excess from the Sunset Strip metal scene of the 1980s. Nearly 30 years later, that sort of mentality among metal bands is long gone. Sure, some try to be as hedonistic still, but the amazing thing was that back then so many of those old bands lived incredibly hard yet backed it up by making some truly great music at the same time. That doesn’t happen much, if at all, anymore.
Australia’s tremendously underrated foursome Mammoth Mammoth love to channel that booze-fueled heavy rock ‘n’ roll of old, and they’ve chosen to pay loving homage to Holmes in their new video for the raucous tune “Lookin’ Down the Barrel”. Watch it below, and be sure to pre-order the excellent new album Volume IV: Hammered Again, which comes out April 7 on Napalm Records.
