“What do you do at this point in your career, when you’ve been around for so long?”

That’s Lori S. from San Francisco’s Acid King. These days she’s asking the big questions. The storied guitarist and frontwoman has been building her electric empire, riff-by-riff, for nearly 30 years. Though Acid King’s lineup may change, Lori remains the driving force and master cylinder.

Adopting the nickname of notorious teenage slayer Ricky Kasso, Acid King came screaming out of San Francisco in 1993 with a sound that fused heavy ’70s proto-metal with the kind of bleary, slow- rolling dirge power being harnessed by their contemporaries in Sleep and Electric Wizard.

The band’s 1993 debut 10” was followed two years later by their first full-length album Zoroaster (Sympathy For The Record Industry), which set the stage for a trio of crucial releases on Frank Kozik’s famed Man’s Ruin label, which included the EP Down with the Crown & Free. But it would be Acid King’s acclaimed 1999 album Busse Woods that solidified their reputation amongst a generation of riff worshipers, weed heads and heavy rock enthusiasts. Two decades of hard touring and sporadic recording ensued.

The band released III in 2005 on Small Stone records and—after parting ways with the musicians who played on 2015’s Middle Of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere—Lori formed a touring lineup that concluded with the Busse Woods 20th Anniversary tour in 2019. Lori wasted no time pondering her next move. The sweeping lockdowns that attended the great plague of 2020-2022 provided the opportunity to collaborate with Black Cobra guitarist/vocalist Jason Landrian.

“Once we got together and started writing, it was clear that it was much more than an obscure, avant-garde instrumental thing we originally had in mind. These were really good songs we were proud of. It became an Acid King record.” The result is Beyond Vision, and it’s unlike anything Acid King has done before.

The undulating, lysergic pulse that underscores Beyond Vision marks the dawn of a new era for a band that previously relied almost exclusively on thundering riffage. Don’t get it twisted, though: There are blistering guitars aplenty. Beyond Vision is simply Acid King in widescreen technicolor and interstellar cinemascope.

“The songs really have no beginning or ending—they all just flow into each other. It’s meant to be listened to as one piece. The whole point was to have the listener feel like they’re on a journey. If you put headphones on, it’ll take you to whatever places you’d like to go to.”

It’s that kind of serendipity that permeates Beyond Vision. What began as an experiment became the path to a silver future.

Formed by brothers Nicky and Aaron Emmert in 2005, Mammatus has spent two decades evolving with a deliberate focus that mirrors the slow, certain growth of the landscapes they inhabit. Deeply rooted in the Santa Cruz mountains, the band—comprising the Emmert brothers and bassist/synthesist Chris Freels—has forged a creative identity inseparable from the geography of the Pacific coast. Their music is an extension of the ancient stillness of the redwood forests, the crushing power of the sea, and the transition of the blue sky into the infinite black of space. Over the last twenty years, Mammatus has moved away from the frantic pace of the modern music industry, opting instead for a path of mindful, glacial precision. This commitment to a patient creative process ensures that their output is a direct reflection of a life lived in observation of the natural world, a philosophy that reached its most recent height in their expansive 2023 work, Expanding Majesty. 

The sonic experience of Mammatus is defined by a panoramic scale that seeks to replicate the staggering proportions of the environment. Their compositions function as immersive, living atmospheres that balance a profound physical weight with moments of weightless, celestial clarity. In a live setting, this manifests as a meticulous layering of sound: guitar chords that strike with the force of a breaking wave before hanging like mountain mist, kaleidoscopic melodic weaving, and the sweeping, organic resonance of analog synthesizers. The interplay between the rhythmic foundation and the soaring electronic textures creates a sound that demands patience and rewards deep listening, built on a structure that is as much about the silence of the forest as it is about the resonance of a full backline. 

At the core of the band’s work is a commitment to positivism and the pursuit of awe. While the music possesses an undeniable intensity, its purpose is to channel the overwhelming beauty of existence and the infinite nature of the universe. By operating on their own timeline and adhering to a strict love of craft, Mammatus has transformed into a vessel for exploring expanded consciousness through the lens of the earth and the stars. A Mammatus performance is not just a concert, but a communal experience of wonder, inviting the listener to step outside of the clock and into a visionary world defined by tradition, patience, and the majesty of the natural order.