First of all: who are you? What are you doing here and why should people bother about your band?

We are MAMMOTH MAMMOTH, a band from Melbourne, Australia. I'm Ben and I play the guitar and he guy's sitting next to you is Mikey who sings. We are here in Germany to get drunk. But actually we also played about 16 shows in row, made possible through our record company called “Napalm Records” who wanted us to come and promote our newest release “Vol. III: Hell's Likely” which was sold really well here in Germany. So we did a tour here as well before we go home and write Vol. IV, our next record.

Could you briefly give a history of your band? Do you also play in other bands?

We all played in other bands in the past but we formed MAMMOTH MAMMOTH in 2007 and been together ever since. We did an EP first with four or five songs, then we did Vol. II, our first full length album. And this records, for which Napalm signed us after we made Vol. III, we used to release ourselves independently. The record company is from Austria. We received an email from them where they asked us if we are signed to any label and we said “no, we all do it independently!”. So we signed to those guys so that's also the main reason why we did a tour here in Germany.

This is the last show of your European tour. How did you experience all of it in general?

It was really great, fantastic. We were touring with another band from Sweden, called THE QUILL. We were sharing a bus, sharing beers...doing lots of fun things. It all worked out pretty well and I would say in this tour it was the best crowd by far. And the best reaction to our music is here in Germany. Every show was such fun. It was amazing, we started our tour in Hamburg in the Markthalle and it was sold out. A full house. But basically, every show was with a huge crowd. And Napalm Records told us, before we came the first time to play in Germany “just don't expect any kind of big crowds”. And now here we are. We didn't now what awaits us, we were just thinking about rather small crowds and venues. But next to Hamburg, Berlin was huge, too. Essen was massive. At the end of this specific show there were about 20 people from the audience on the stage just going nuts. It was fucking great! And many places, we were just jumping out of the bus and people were already waiting with their albums to get signed. Fun!

I know its a stereotype, but Germans are said to be more introvert and seem harder to impress.

No! And I'm being honest here, every German show was going harder than any show we have done in Australia. We are friends with another Australian band called AIRBOURNE and they find it exactly to be the same way, in Germany, people just love it. They love to buy new records, have patches on their jacket. And that's why I think we will be back next year. Many bands from Australia just really try to get out of it. It is a very hard and small market there. The cities are so far apart- Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide. Perth. It is all far to go too. Those are the cities where you can play and you actually have to fly to get to them. For us it is amazing to come to Germany, you just can hop on a bus and get to all of this different venues. A lot of venues, lots of different faces. And every crowd just loved it! We love Germany! We want to move here, specifically to Freiburg. It is one of our most favorite cities so far. So, we want to come here and live in Freiburg! And Germany is our new favorite country, ever! We been to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and the UK. And we didn't really like the UK, wasn't much fun. We just couldn't wait to get out of it. When we were there all we thought was like “fucking take us back to Germany!”Everyone over there is just so friendly, lovely people in every venue we went to.

You just described the difficulties bands have in Australia. I have never been there or more specifically, in Melbourne. Is there a vivid scene when it comes to stoner/hard rock ?

There definitely is. We have like about three key venues we play a lot. There is the The Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda which constantly got rock bands every other week. St. Kilda is like kind of the Berlin of Australia. It was in the 80s and still is: a lot of artists, musicians come out to hang out. We have a lane in the middle of the city called “AC/DC” lane, in which you can also find the Cherry Bar. That is one of our favorite places to play, a lots of bands just go there, hanging out. And bands, even though they played in other venues before, they still go after the gig to the Cherry Bar. It is considered to be one of the biggest Rock'n'Roll bars in the world. I mean, the lane is called after AC/DC, to that's pretty rock. We played there a lot, but in Australia it is like you get into a certain point where you already played all of them. We are running out places to play! Plus, Mickey really tends to get really excited while playing: there is another very famous venue in Melbourne called The Tote. We played there and at our first song Mickey smashed his head through the window, flew over the other side and the security guy outside was just like “what the hell”. Blood was everywhere, he just climbed back through the window, jumped on stage again and finished the rest of the set. So yeah, we thought, we better come to Europe!

“Hell's Likely” came out exactly one year ago at this very date, the 23rd of November. How long do you think will it take you to finish new stuff?

As soon as we get back to Melbourne we get to start to write a new album, we all talked about it today. We had a meeting with the A&R guy from Napalm Records and he told us to do it as soon as we can. So we will go back to Australia and do it just straight away. We write songs by just kind of jamming. Actually, the front cover of “Hell's Likely”, with the girl in the woods. That's exactly where the film clip was made and close where we have rehearsals. We get into the bush, into a little shack. With our band's money we bought petrol generators, we turn them on, plug our amps in them. We lay a carpet down, put the drum kit there and we just jam in the middle of the forrest. Drink lots of Jack Daniel's. And the said girl, the one of the cover, she lives nearby and makes really good psychedelic mushroom tea. She spends a lot of her time in the day picking these really strong mushrooms and pours tea for us. When we drink it, we can write and play songs for days! After that, we record everything we played the whole time in the woods, cut that up and then we go to the recording studio, pick the best bits to make song of that. So, with doing this we hopefully will have our new album ready by this time next year. And then we will try to organize a tour to come back here as soon as possible! And then every show should be full crowded, same as this time!