Wampus Cat: 'Wampus Cat'

Wampus Cat

Wampus Cat

Knoxville doom quartet Wampus Cat takes is name from the mysterious wampus cat of Cherokee mythology and Appalachian folklore, a foreboding half-woman, half-feline harbinger of death. Wampus Cat the band is similarly foreboding; on its debut self-titled album, the band pays respect to doom godfathers Black Sabbath and Cathedral but also applies the abstract riffing and otherworldly howls of more recent groups like Khanate and Electric Wizard. The result is a suffocating 40 minutes of stomp and swagger, a black hole of heavy noise that sometimes swings and sometimes lurches, occasionally in the same song (see the Southern sludge of “Swamp Witch,” which incorporates the druggy squalor of Eyehategod into old-school traditional metal).

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