truly one of the most understood and underdogged bands playing in the southern unitedstates,with tours under there belts with some of the best psychedelic bands in america ie( yume bitsu,st37,primordial undermind)it was only a matter of time before these psychonauts invaded europe with there organic noise and rock stew of southern damnation called tradeing the witch for the devil a must for lovers of scary music and garage psychedelic metal free jams.

from Dead Angel #54 (11/02) http://www.monotremata.com/dead/issues/da54.html "From Mandragora comes more sonic filth with poignant, sensitive artwork of naked chicks with goat heads. This is loud, disturbed deathdrone from the word go. Three guys from North Carolina more or less in Thrones mode churn out grotesque slabs of dissonant guitar noise (big, squealing stuck-pig mojo in hideously dissonant intervals, just like the dude with the excruciating guitar tone in the sadly-lamented Arab on Radar) on grating, intimidating spoo like "jesus told you so," "hiroshima," and "what is sharper than the sword," and the rest of the time they drone 'n churn like the bad thoughts of the alien creeping in the bowels of the Nostronomo. (Remember, in space no one can hear you scream because the soundtrack´s too loud.) A lot of these tracks feature any number of other unexpected instruments (piano, etc.) for dramatic effect, but the streetcleaner sounds are the main meat o´ the enchilada here. Some of the more hypnotic moments ("I have been an axe in the hand," for instance) suggest what Pink Floyd might have become had Syd not fried his central nervous system, and "to avert ones eyes" suggests that they aren´t solely reliant on volume and aggression for the production of their otherworldly doom. Some of this borders on the purely scary, like "kuate palace -- three piece suite," which starts of like the sound of soldiers marching off to war before turning into a forbidding martial psychodrone, from there on spiraling even deeper into dark psychosis. Through all the different moods of the piece, chanting vocals lend it an otherworldly aspect, like the sound of having stumbled onto a ritual for rising the Elder Gods or something equally creeped-out. I particularly like the droning flutes at the beginning of "painted men / yarmar uprising" -- the flutes that eventually swallowed by the growing thunder-drone that gradually dominates. They even wallow in the dark-ambient trough with the appropriately downed-out closer "the master´s on his way," all black wind and shuddering drone and the vague but chilling sound of goat-lords convening in the background. Possibly a tad Melvins-oriented for the purists, but we approve nonetheless (their deathbleat is at least more consistent, to be sure)."