Legendary guitarist Ed Mundell of Monster Magnet, whose demonic licks were responsible for that band's most freaked-out albums, formed Atomic Bitchwax in their home base of New Jersey back in 1993, but it took five years to materialize their music on an album: Atomic Bitchwax (Mia, 1999). Mundell's restless guitar is supported by the neurotic delivery of Chris Kosnik (vocals and bass) and Keith Ackerman's stunning drumming (a relentless beat machine in the tradition of John Bonham and Keith Moon), both coming from the Slap Rocket,
Compared with other "stoner" bands, such as Captain Beyond, Fu Manchu, Kyuss and Nebula, their style is much more improvisational and more guitar-based. Mundell's trio erects a cult of riff which closely mirrors Jimi Hendrix Experience's wild and loose jamming around the guitar's improvisations. Mundell, a devoted Tommy Bolin fan, has inherited a passion for smoking blues riffs.
The show opens with a brief instrumental, Stork, which brings back memories of Led Zeppelin and Traffic. Then the power-trio's energy explodes in Birth To The Earth, a raw blues-rock jewel in the tradition of Mountain and Free, and, from here on, it's a trip at breakneck speed. Stronger doses of adrenalin propel Hey Alright (which already appeared on a 1997 compilation), in the name of Led Zeppelin's rock and roll and with runaway drumming, and Shitkicker, a compat, lucid, quintessential rave-up.
After the instrumental jam of Crazed Fandango (a Tommy Bolin song interpreted from Carlos Santana's latin perspective), Mundell charges head down with the ferocious, dark, Black Sabbath-ian riff of Hope You Die, only to pause in the smouldering tension of the cinematic instrumental Last Of The V8 Interceptors. The instrumental skills of the band emerge from Getting Old's long ouverture and from instrumental tour de force The Formula, whose 11 minutes cover more ground than most grunge bands covered in their entire career, cross-breeding progressive-rock and acid-rock, redefining heavy rock melodrama in an arresting psychological dimension. The pace is just unrelenting.
American hard-psych-rock has been left behind by the Japanese horde, and Atomic Bitchwax is no Fushitsusha, but Mundell does rule in his own little empire.

II (Tee Pee, 2000) is a disappointment. Forty-Five and Cast Aside Your Mask are forceful and energetic, while Solid and Cloning Chamber are dark, magnetic psychedelia, but most of the album sounds like leftovers from the previous one.

Spit Blood (Meteor City, 2002) is a test of how many times a stoner band can repeat the same, obnoxious concepts and still find an audience.