Acid Mothers Temple + The Macks
Mercury Lounge
November 5, 2025
Mercury Lounge might have neon John Moreland and Zach Bryan signs on their walls, but don’t think that excludes this venue from Tulsa’s musical eclecticism. The bar known for Americana and roots rock played host to Japanese psychedelic legends Acid Mothers Temple last Wednesday.
Part krautrock, part jam band, part noise, Acid Mothers Temple have often been mistaken for a religious cult—which they are not. But they are every bit a cult band, one that inhabits a zone of its own and tends to draw more fanatics than fans. Formed in Japan in the mid-’90s by guitarist Makoto Kawabata1, they emerged from a scene inspired by Can and Hawkwind, devoted to “extreme trip music” that blends psych, drone, space rock, and noise. Their extensive catalog—live recordings, collaborations, official releases, and bootlegs—could become your life, and for the Tulsa fanatics I know, their appearance at Mercury was a confounding surprise.
Opening band The Macks, new to me, have punny song titles and slightly cartoonish merch, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Their smart rhythmic sleight of hand and stop-gap misdirection was far more Escher than Disney. An opening keyboard salvo of Kraftwerkian arpeggios lulled the audience into its vamp before the full band ripped into the pattern mid-sentence and scrambled the crowd’s headbanging in a rhythmic bait and switch.
Frontman Sam Fulwiler headed the band with a lackadaisical Stone Roses/serial-killer posturing that was hilarious when contrasted against The Macks’ angular, polyrhythmic wizardry. They’re doing psychedelic music through sheer force of rhythmic interplay and ferocity; lesser garage-psych bands only make it home from the pawn shop with their first delay pedal and stop there. I guess they’re from Portland, but I immediately thought they were Australian, and it’s because they made me think of Total Control, not … those other Australian garage-psych guys.
The Acid Mothers Temple soundcheck was psychedelic in itself, with a long session of reverbed guitar plodding that sounded like Syd Barrett listening to Exile on Main Street outtakes, laid over delayed choruses of vocal yelps that replaced the usual “check one, check two” on the microphone. Psych check done, they erupted into an a-melodic full-band blast reminiscent of countrymen Melt-Banana, before coalescing into a heavy, stop-start Laurel Canyon groove with the keyboardist’s theremin/synth stylings layered on top of the chaotic noise-rock the signaled the set’s true arrival.
Fuck flower power. This was flower violence, a buildup that ran straight off a cliff into a full doom drop-off—a drowning minor-key fistfight on fumes that landed gracefully into a lake of lava-lamp viscosity and Pink Floydian interspace.