UFOmammut


(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )

Godlike Snake (2000), 6/10
Snailking (2003), 7/10
Lucifer Songs (2005), 5/10
Idolum (2008), 6/10
Eve (2010), 6.5/10
Oro Opus Primum (2012) , 5/10
Oro Opus Alter (2012), 5/10
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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)

Italian stoners Ufomammut debuted with the visceral Godlike Snake (2000) in an ultra-heavy space-rock vein. Snailking (Music Cartel, 2003) introduced new elements (such as samples and electronics). Alcool is open-heart surgery: post-psychedelic avantgarde music with no monster riffs and no vocals, just an abstract eerie soundscape. Besides the sinister Blotch in the vein of Amon Duul II, the highlight is the plastic 28-minute hallucination of Demontain, whose voodoo-dance beat and electronic whistling lead again into avantgarde territory until a few minutes from the end, when the guitar intones a melody that hints at a unifying theme. Demontain flies beyond the stereotypes of the genre, beyond psychedelic rock and beyond melodic music: it's a form of dynamic psychological electroacoustic jamming. In fact, the mandatory bass rumble of stoner-rock is almost an unwelcome addition to songs that could stand on their own merits, particularly the tense desperate noisy ritualistic God and the lugubrious slow ballad Lacrimosa, and even the veiled Led Zeppelin ripoff of Odio.

The sonic evolution continued on Lucifer Songs (Rocket Recordings, 2005) and especially Idolum (Supernatural Cat, 2008), with the 22-minute Void, but the group fundamentally remained faithful to its stoner aesthetics.

The five-movement (mostly instrumental) suite of Eve (Supernatural Cat, 2010) marked perhaps their baroque zenith. The first movement is simply a 14-minute long repetition of a simple lugubrious leitmotiv, the ideal soundtrack for a black mass. The second movement is a calculated progression from a tiny chaos of sounds to a grandiose orgiastic tribal dance. The fifth movement is, again, a hynpotic, repetitive dance-trance that only towards the end unleashes a whirlwind of demented garage jamming. The only drawback of this new version of Ufomammut is that the music does not vary much. It is the stoner equivalent of some new-age music that simply creates a mood in which the listener is supposed to immerse without truly "listening".

Oro Opus Primum (Neurot, 2012) and Oro Opus Alter (2012) used the skills honed over a decade to compose a sophisticated synth-driven esoteric concept.

(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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