Posted in Whathaveyou on April 20th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Good news for, well, the universe, in that Italian cosmic doom magnates Ufomammut have drawn themselves back from hiatus in order to forge ahead with new material and a new drummer. After last month overseeing the release of a live album documenting their performance of the landmark album Eve (review here; discussed here) at Roadburn 2011, guitarist Poia and bassist Urlo have brought the band back with new drummer Levre, a friend of long-standing who’s previously toured with them.
So Ufomammut‘s hiatus, which was announced in January of last year, has basically rounded out to the band taking the same year off as everyone else. They just got in on the ground floor of 2020 inactivity, which in the end probably saved them a lot of canceled tour dates — though of course Poia pressed forward with solo-outfit The Mon and they would’ve been without a drummer following the departure of Vita, so yeah. Either way, glad there’s new Ufomammut on the horizon. The universe wasn’t quite the same without them.
From the PR wire:
UFOMAMMUT: Italian Heavy Psychedelic Trio Returns, Announcing New Drummer; New Plans And Recordings In The Works
Following a year-and-a-half of hiatus and regrouping, Italy’s reigning champions of immersive, heavy, psychedelic metal UFOMAMMUT announces their return, with a revamped lineup.
UFOMAMMUT spent several years of heavy touring across Europe and the United States supporting their eighth LP, 8, which saw release through Neurosis’ Neurot Recordings in 2017, resulting in their most successful live ventures in their two-decades-long history. In 2019, the band celebrated their twentieth anniversary, releasing the mammoth XX box set, commemorating their extensive discography. Shortly thereafter, the members experienced some differences on where the band was headed, and in January of 2020, longtime drummer Vita parted ways with the outfit and the band announced an indefinite hiatus. Weeks later, the world would find itself consumed by the worldwide outbreak of the still-ongoing pandemic.
During this ominous past year of outbreaks, lockdowns, cancellations, and severe angst, UFOMAMMUT’s guitarist Poia and bassist/vocalist Urlo channeled their energy into positive action, and silently reorganized the band. Now, they proudly welcome their new drummer, Levre, and the band’s return in 2021.
The band proudly announces, “After celebrating twenty years as a band, UFOMAMMUT reached a point of no return. As a result of an intense and difficult period, our paths divided. At the beginning of January 2020 Vita left the band and UFOMAMMUT announced that it was time to stop for an indefinite period of time. Shortly thereafter, the whole world was overwhelmed by the pandemic, which would have profoundly changed our lives. In this suspended time, we have had time to think, recover the lost energy and plan a new beginning. Now we are ready. It’s time to turn on the amps again.”
While no official plans have been announced, the revamped UFOMAMMUT is already putting projects into action, and new material is under construction. Stand by for further announcements on the band’s upcoming activities in 2021 and beyond over the months ahead.
In related news, UFOMAMMUT’s Urlo has been hard at work on new material for his solo project, The Mon, which debuted in 2018, with new material on the way this year. He also launched a new online video series during the pandemic, Para(In)Phernalia, with discussions on the gear, equipment, and techniques he and the other members of the band use to produce their sonic and visual creations. The installments have gained a healthy following from the band’s diehard fanbase, which reacts with notes and inquires, making for a very interactive experience.
The Malleus Rock Art Lab collective, which is also directly operated by members of UFOMAMMUT and Supernatural Cat, has also just launched their own new clothing line! Featuring bold prints and artwork created by the cooperative outfit, from the cotton used to the label applied to each garment, up to the shipping packaging, the group paid great attention to every detail of the new project. The entire printing and production process is 100% created in Italy and it’s carried out by Turin-based lab Sericraft.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 26th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
All around horizons, sunrises and sunsets, suns and moons, northern lights and the equator in the middle of the sky like a shooting star, and the man and a monkey, dinosaurs and paper boats, all day and all night, and the rocks above the sea floating above the sky and I saw aeroplanes moving those buried in green fields of silence while I, in the middle of all this, believed, thought, dreamt of being alive. — The Mon, “Demon Box”
The Mon is a new solo-project from Ufomammut bassist, vocalist and synth master Urlo. Born Giovanni Rossi and based in Tortona, Urlo is also a member of the graphic arts collective Malleus and has overseen releases through Ufomammut‘s label wing, Supernatural Cat. With The Mon, he pushes further, into atmospheric improvisation, video expression and series, and narrative storytelling. “Demon Box,” the new single from The Mon premiering in the video below, was born out of a story written by Urlo — very much a man-meets-demon kind of affair — and posted to his website (urlothemon.com) that he wound up backing with improvised guitar and a synth track while he recited the tale.
That original improv version of “Demon Box,” with Urlo reading as he plays in what I’ll guess is a home studio, can be seen below. It’s an impressive feat — one thinks of playing guitar and singing in corresponding rhythm and melody as difficult enough, let alone reading a full sentence rather than the lines of a verse while still strumming — but he pulls it off, and though the official video with the creeping bugs and so on brings a more refined mix of the song (such as it is), it continues to hold the exploratory spirit from whence it was made while also showing Urlo as a songwriter one way or the other in the builds and cascades of his sentences. The full clip runs a little under nine minutes, and flows easily in atmosphere and ambience as Urlo seems to be setting up paths leading through what seem like disparate influences through folk, cinematic scoring and short-story writing.
But as ever — and this was always something that made Ufomammut special too — these lines aren’t really there. If you read that sentence in the last paragraph (first, thanks) and maybe imagined a road forking in three different directions, the reality of The Mon is different in that it’s not about one or the other, it’s about encompassing all of it into a multi-dimensional work. “Demon Box,” as a vehicle for this impulse, brings various sides together instead of splitting them apart by category, and that’s something of which other manifestations can be heard in The Mon‘s other recorded work in the 2020 two-songer “The Manure of Our Remains” b/w “Blut (Acoustic Version)” or The Mon‘s previous full-length collection, 2018’s Doppelleben, which purposefully centers around the idea of leading a double-life, who you are and who you become.
I won’t try to predict where Urlo might steer The Mon from this point — what fun would that be? — but at a time when many are being forced to or feeling an impulse to follow new avenues of creativity, “Demon Box” is s consistent in purpose as it is divergent in form.
Please enjoy:
The Mon, “Demon Box” official video premiere
The Mon is the solo project of Urlo, bass player, singer and synth master of Ufomammut.
This song is based on a story written by Urlo a few years ago and titled “Demon Box”.
The story is about a man, staring at an open box seeing a lot of mystical and crazy things happening in his mind.
He sees the history of the world happen, as an alchemical transformation of everything into gold, the search for knowledge and the infinite smallness of the human being compared to Nature.
The man closes the box and goes away.
It is the cruel story of life, as the video represents.
An ant nest, a centipede and a spider cross their paths of life and death without apparent contact, but linked by the surrounding environment.
The song was originally born as an improvisation and then I decided to record it and make it an official release, being a new musical path I never did before.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 13th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Ufomammut have gone on hiatus, and the question I keep coming back to is whether or not the band had run their course. For those unaware — who likely aren’t reading this anyway because if you don’t know the band you’re probably not interested in their breaking up, but stay with me — the Italian three-piece of bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Urlo, guitarist/keyboardist Poia and drummer Vita formed in 1999 and would go on to serve as progenitors of a movement one can now refer to as cosmic doom largely because of the work they did in shaping it. Their blend of psychedelia and crushing rhythm and tone remains largely unmatched in the known universe, and if you think their innovation ends with “they play doom with keyboards,” I wholeheartedly invite you to partake of 2010’s Eve (review here, also discussed here) and eat your words. And just in case you click either of those links, I’ll prepare you: there are few records I’ve lauded as voraciously on this site, and I stand by every word of that hyperbole.
The band say in their statement that they’re not done, despite Vita leaving, but that they’re stepping back after this 20-year run to reassess and regroup, figuratively and literally. Best wishes to them for that, of course, but going back to the initial question, I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that they had nothing more to say. I’ll say outright that nothing they’ve done since has hit me in the same impact as Eve — whether it was 2017’s 8 (review here), 2015’s Ecate (review here) or 2012’s two-parter, Oro: Opus Primum (review here) and Oro: Opus Alter (review here) — but honestly, few records have by anyone else either. But Ufomammut have never stopped moving forward creatively, and even the manner in which they marked their 20th anniversary, with the XX EP (review here) and box set, found them bringing new ideas to their past work, reinventing it in an even more atmospheric context.
And that’s what makes me say no to the above question and, in particular, what makes me interested in where Ufomammut might go when this hiatus ends, which, again, they say it will, despite its “indefinite” nature. The fact that they’ve never done anything but build on their past. I’m not blind to the fact that this will be the first lineup change involving what was the core trio of the band for two decades, and nor will I minimize Vita‘s contributions to the personality of the group — he can still be heard in Sonic Wolves and Rogue State — but what does a post-hiatus Ufomammut sound like? Where does that scope go? My guess is forward.
The band’s statement follows:
After twenty years, Ufomammut is pausing for a while, the time has come to turn off amplifiers and let the tubes cool down, to let the silence allow us to rebuild, and then start again.
This decision comes to the end of an intense and difficult period of problems and misunderstandings that none of us has been able to solve and overcome, after which Vita decided to leave the band.
We thank him for sharing with us twenty incredible years of creation, recordings, tours and concerts, of uncompromising music, sacrifices and great satisfactions.
Started in February 1999, it’s been a journey in which we have been lucky enough to create our music and to tour all around the world to play it, as well as the honor of sharing the stage with our favorite bands.
It’s been an opportunity that made us understand that this band is not only the three guys on stage, but also YOU.
YOU made us live through emotions which we would have not experienced otherwise.
YOU, that have shared with us the sound and the power of this religion without boundaries and ideology, that is music.
Posted in Reviews on October 4th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Oh hi, I didn’t see you there. Earlier this week — Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and yes, even Wednesday — the alarm went off at 4AM as usual and I got up, got coffee going and a protein bar and sat down to write, starting basically around quarter-after with a quick email check and whatnot. In terms of basic timing, this last morning of the Fall 2019 Quarterly Review is no different. I even have the baby monitor streaming on my phone as I would most mornings, so I can keep an eye on when The Pecan gets up. What’s changed is I’m sitting in a hotel lobby in Oslo, Norway, having just arrived on an overnight flight from Newark. Managed to sleep some on the plane and I’m hopeful adrenaline will pick up the rest of the slack as regards getting through the day. That and caffeine, anyhow.
Although, speaking of, my debit card doesn’t work and I’ll need to sort that out.
First thing’s first, and that’s reviews. Last batch of 10 for the week. We made it. Thanks as always for reading and being a part of this thing. Let’s wrap it up in style, and because I like working on a theme, three Irish bands in a row close out. Hey, I went to Ireland this year.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Ufomammut, XX
Five years ago, Roman cosmic doom masters Ufomammut took a reflective look back at their career for its 15th anniversary with the documentary/live-performance DVD XV (review here). And since one might define the arc of their tenure as constantly trying to top themselves, for their 20th anniversary, they’ve issued a 12LP boxed set, titled simply XX, that compiles their nine albums to-date and tops them off with the mostly-subdued-style XX itself, which reimagines past cacophonies like “Mars” and “Plouton” in a quieter context. That part of the mega-offering issued through their own Supernatural Cat imprint comprises six songs recorded live and makes highlights out of the hypnotic strum and incantations of “Satan” as well as the rumbling drone of “Lacrimosa,” which takes on new emotional resonance for the shoegazy treatment it receives. I’ve said on multiple occasions throughout the years that Ufomammut are a band to be treasured, and I stand by that 100 percent. The XX box should be perceived by fans as an opportunity to do likewise.
Less than a year after issuing their second long-player in the form of Holocene (review here) through Blackseed and Doom Stew Records, Pittsburgh atmosludgers Horehound align with DHU Records for the two-song 8″ EP Weight, which brings “Unbind” and “The Heavy,” two new cuts that, while I’m not sure they weren’t recorded at the same time as the last album — that is, they may have been — they nonetheless showcase the emergent melodic breadth and instrumental ambience that is developing in their sound. Even as “Unbind” rolls toward its low-end tempo kick, it does so with marked patience and a willingness to stay slow until just the right moment, which is not something every band cane effectively do. “The Heavy,” meanwhile, builds itself around a Crowbar-style dirge riff before Shy Kennedy‘s verse arrives as a standalone element, all the instruments around her dropping out from behind. That moment alone, frankly, is worth the price of admission, as whether it’s through that extra inch in diameter of the platter itself or through the audio of the tracks in question, Horehound continue to distinguish themselves.
I’m not sure I’m qualified to write about Lingua Ignota‘s CALIGULA (on Profound Lore), but I’m not sure anyone else is either. Like a self-harmonizing mega-Jarboe turning existential horror into epic proclamations of “I don’t eat/I don’t sleep” on “DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR?” amid bass throb and terrifying melodic layering before making bedroom black metal sound like the lightweight self-indulgence it’s always been on the subsequent check-out-the-real-shit “BUTCHER OF THE WORLD,” Kristin Hayter‘s work is little short of experimentalist brilliance. She is minimal and yet over-the-top, open in creative terms but unwaveringly dark and rife with melody but severe to the point now and again of true aural abrasion. She weaves a context of her own into “FUCKING DEATHDEALER” as she recalls the lyrics to the aforementioned “BUTCHER OF THE WORLD,” while the outright brutality of “SPITE ALONE HOLDS ME ALOFT” is married to a piano-led meditation that, even without the noise wash from whence it comes, is enough to recast visions of what heavy is and can be in musical terms. I won’t pretend to get all the references like “kyrie eleison” (“lord have mercy”) worked into “IF THE POISON WON’T TAKE YOU MY DOGS WILL” and the violent strains surrounding, but it’s impossible not to realize the power of what you’re hearing when you listen.
With an intensity born out of a history of industrial music and focus on tight rhythms making an impact in even-tighter songwriting, Valborg are neither beholden to death metal nor entirely separate from it, but their style has taken on a life of its own over the course of the last 10 years, and their latest offering, Zentrum (on Prophecy Productions), is the German trio’s most individualized take yet, whether that’s shown in the unbridled melodicism of “Anomalie,” the sludgy riff that drives the barking “Ultragrab” or the seemingly unrelenting snare pops of “Kreuzer” that, even when they finally release that tension, still make it only a temporary reprieve. Valborg‘s sense of control through the epic “Nonnenstern” should not be understated, and though the track is under four minutes long, yes, “epic” very much applies. Suitably enough, they close with “Vakuum” and throw everything at the listener at once before resolving in relatively peaceful atmospherics that could just as easily serve as an introduction to the next round of malice to come, whenever it shows up.
Spanish trio Sageness — also written SageNESS — conjure smooth Electric Moon-style soundscapes on their second album, Akmé, and yes, that is a compliment. The record brings forth six tracks of easy-rolling instrumentalist jam-based heavy psychedelia that offer much and take little in return, the richness of the guitar tone from Dawyz and Michi‘s bass given jazzy fluidity by Fran‘s drumming. “Ephemeral” touches most directly on a Colour Haze, as it would almost have to, but even there, the feeling of spaciousness that Sageness present in the recording is a factor that helps them come across as more individual. Earlier, “The Thought” is a little more directly space rock, but opener “Andromeda” seems to be charting the course with its liquefied effects and somehow-even-more-liquefied groove, and if you can’t get down with that, I’ve got nothing for you and neither does the rest of the universe.
It’s not exactly true, about their being no light ever on Boston post-metallers Glacier‘s latest full-length, No Light Ever. Sure, it’s plenty dark and heavy and brooding and all that fun stuff, and the riffs get loud and the drums break stuff and all that, but it’s certainly colorful in its way as well, and more than just shades of black on black. Comprised of four tracks cumbersomely titled in keeping with the traditions of the likes of Red Sparowes and the band’s own past work, cuts like “O World! I Remain No Longer Here.” and “The Bugles Blow, Fanned by Hysteria.” stretch themselves out along a scope as massive as the tonality the band emits, and as the wash of “We Glut Our Souls on the Accursed,” — the comma is part of the title there — gives way to feedback and the onset of “And We Are Damned Amid Noble Sound.” the sense of immersion is complete and clear as the priority under which they’re working. It’s about the whole album, or at least the two sides, as a unified work, and about crafting a world through the atmosphere evoked in the material. It works. If they say there’s no light in that world, so be it. It’s whatever they want it to be.
Not-entirely-bereft-of-vowels South Carolina heavy trio MNRVA make their debut with the three-song EP Black Sky, a beast of a short release led by the riffs of guitarist Byron Hark on a stretch of ’90s-style crunch and sludge, with bassist/vocalist Kevin Jennings and drummer Gina Ercolini adding to the weight and shove of the proceedings, respectively. “Not the One” has the hook, “No Solution” has the impact and the title-track has both, and though I’m by no means saying the issue of their sound is settled 100 percent and they won’t grow or find their way from this — again, their debut — EP, they do prove to be well in charge of where their songs head in terms of mood and the atmosphere that comes through elements like the blown-out vocals and the rumbling bass beneath the lead guitar in the second half of “Black Sky” itself. Indeed, it’s those harsher aspects that help MNRVA immediately establish their individuality, and the vibe across these 18-plus minutes is that the punishment is only getting started.
Just because Irish four-piece Coroza — guitarist/vocalists Ciaran Coghlan and Jack O’Neill, bassist/vocalist Jonny Canning and drummer Ollie Cunningham — might write a song that’s 18 minutes long, that doesn’t mean they forgot to actually make it a song as well. Thus it is that extended cuts like “The Plutonian Drug” (18:24) and closer “Iron from the Sky” (19:30) have plenty of room to flesh out their more progressive aspects amid the other three also-kind-of-extended pieces on Chaliceburner, the group’s ambitious hour-plus/five-track debut full-length. Each song essentially becomes a front-to-back movement on its own, with shifts between singers arranged thoughtfully from one part to the next and hooks along the way to serve as landmarks for those traversing, as in the opening “Chaliceburner” or the gruff winding moments of “Mountain Jaw,” which follows the nine-minute sax-inclusive centerpiece “Scaltheen,” because of course there’s a saxophone in there somewhere. All of this is a recipe for a band biting off more than they can chew stylistically, but Coroza manage pretty well the various twists and turns of their own making, particularly considering it’s their first album.
Encased front and back by witchy samples and creepy vibes, Sept. 2019’s She of the Woods is the second demo in two months to come from Cork, Ireland’s Noosed. And you know it when they get around to the closing seven-minute title-track because it’s just about the only thing other than “Intro” that isn’t raging with grind intensity, but that stuff can be fun too. I don’t know how much witch-grind-doom is out there, but Noosed‘s first, self-titled demo (released in August) had a sludgy edge that seems to have separated out to some degree here into a multifaceted personality. Can one possibly be certain of the direction the band will ultimately take? Shit no. It’s two demos with basically no time differential between them. But if they can effectively bridge the gap between “Fuck Up,” “Wretch” and “She of the Woods,” or even play directly with the contrast, they could be onto something with all this noise and fuckall.
The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — has it such that Irish four-piece zhOra wanted to do something less complicated than was their 2017 album, Ethos, Pathos, Logos (discussed here), so they went ahead and wrote a song that’s five minutes long and purposefully hops between subgenres, going from sludge to doom to a deathcore breakdown, with a snare-pop count-in, to blackened death metal and then back to a lumbering chug to finish out. Okay, zhOra, “Ruthless Bastards” is a an awful lot of metal and an awfully good time, but you missed the mark on “simple” by a considerable margin. If indeed the band had been plotting toward something, say, easier to play or to compose, “Ruthless Bastards” ain’t it. They’ll have to settle for being brutal as fuck instead. Something tells me they’ll survive having made that trade, as much as anything will.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 31st, 2019 by JJ Koczan
I was kind of curious whether or not Ufomammut would do anything other than the touring to celebrate their 20th anniversary this year, and apparently they’re kind of doing everything. XX, to be released Sept. 9 through the band’s own Supernatural Cat imprint, compiles their nine albums in one box and has a bonus of re-recorded tracks, and comes with a special book and photos, lyrics, a poster and backpatch other sundry other this-and-thats as detailed below.
You might recall the three-piece cosmic doomers issued the documentary/live-performance DVD XV (review here) when they hit the 15-year mark. I have to wonder what they might do in five years’ time when they pass a quarter-century. They’re setting a pretty high standard here. Re-record Godlike Snake? I don’t even know.
Preorders are up now for the box, and if you want one, get yours in, because these will go and be gone:
UFOMAMMUT Announces XX Discography Boxset Celebrating Their 20th Anniversary In 2019
Italy’s mind-altering trio UFOMAMMUT marks their 20th Anniversary as a band this year. Having recently returned from their latest European and North American tours, the band has a new surprise for their amazing and loyal fans. On September 9th, Supernatural Cat will release a special anniversary box set, XX.
To be released on both CD and LP, the XX box set will feature nine UFOMAMMUT albums, all individually housed in sleeves with exclusive cover artworks, created specifically for this release. The box sets will include all eight studio albums; Godlike Snake, Snailking, Lucifer Song, Idolum, Eve, Oro, Ecate, and 8. Additionally, the box will include a new release, titled XX. This new recording features six revisited tracks – “Satan,” “Plouton,” “Lacrimosa,” “Infearnatural,” “Mars,” and “Destroyer – which were re-recorded during the band’s recent European tour. These special box sets will also include a 64-page book with original covers, photos, and lyrics to all songs with an additional poster, backpatch, and sticker.
The XX box sets are available for preorder at the new UFOMAMMUT official webstore along with other exclusive new merchandise RIGHT HERE.
UFOMAMMUT has also just announced further European touring for later in the year, surrounded by one-off festival performances this summer, two gigs in Russia this September, with more tour dates to be announced over the months ahead, as the band celebrates their 20th Anniversary with their fans around the planet.
UFOMAMMUT 2019 Live Dates: 5/30/2019 Dunk! Festival – Zottegem, BE 9/11/2019 Aglomerat – Moscow, RU 9/12/2019 MOD – St. Petersburg, RU 9/26/2019 Le Fil – Saint Etienne, FR 9/27/2019 Petit Bain – Paris, FR 9/28/2019 The Garage – London, UK 9/29/2019 Magasin 4 – Brussels, BE 9/30/2019 Melkweg – Amsterdam, NL 10/02/2019 Vega – Copenhagen, DK 10/03/2019 Sticky Fingers – Göteborg, SE 10/04/2019 Høstsabbat – Oslo, NO 10/05/2019 – TBA 10/06/2019 Debaser – Stockholm, SE 10/08/2019 On The Rocks – Helsinki, FI 10/09/2019 Von Krahl – Tallinn, ES 10/10/2019 Melna Piektdiena – Riga, LV 10/11/2019 Narauti – Vilnius, LT 10/12/2019 Hydrozagadka – Warsaw, PL 10/13/2019 Zet Pe Te – Krakow, PL 10/15/2019 Rockhouse – Salzburg, AT 10/16/2019 Mochvara – Zagreb, CR
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 4th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
You might recall that when they hit their 15th anniversary in 2014, Ufomammut released the retrospective documentary, XV (review here), to mark the occasion. It seems their 20th year will be noted by seeing them do what they do best: tour and destroy. The Italian cosmic doom magnates have continued their forward-thinking, heavy-like-planets approach and managed to do nothing but grow each time out, and if you’ve never seen them live, well, that sounds like a personal problem it’s probably time to rectify. They’ll be out in Europe this Spring, doing a route mostly through Germany with a couple stops in the Netherlands and one in Switzerland — plus a couple dates TBA — but look for more to come because there’s an awful lot of year left and as they’ve shown over the last two decades, Ufomammut are hardly shy when it comes to getting out. To wit, they’ve already been announced as headliners for Oslo’s Høstsabbat festival in October. So yeah, more to come.
Shows are presented by Sound of Liberation:
20 YEARS UFOMAMMUT | FIRST TOUR DATES
In this year 2019, Ufomammut is celebrating 20 years as a band.
The band was formed in February of 1999 by Poia, Urlo and Vita in a small room in the middle of nowhere in Italy.
The idea was to survive the boredom of living in a little town while also having the intention of creating music to spread all around the globe.
After eight albums, plenty of tours, festivals and kilometers on the road, the band is ready to celebrate this important anniversary event with their marvelous and loyal fans with a special European tour this spring.
I wanted to close out this week with something spacious and brain-meltingly heavy, and once I knew that, there was really nowhere else to turn other than to Ufomammut. When their sixth full-length, the 44-minute single piece divided into five parts Eve (review here), was released in 2010 on Supernatural Cat — prior to their signing to Neurot — the band had this to say about its making:
As per the band, the concept of Eve was initially inspired by Pink Floyd‘s Meddle album. “The idea was to work on a long song and some satellites” the band state. “Then we started in playing this song that was growing and developing bigger and bigger. And it was like we were reaching something new; a different knowledge. So I got the feeling we had to move it around something that was about freedom; the idea of rebellion, of fighting to reach something important, and peculiar.”
“The concept of Eve was cool because cause you can read it on both sides, like the Ouroboros; a serpent circle eating itself. When all the other numeric things we came out together it all sounded like it was fate, it had to be done.”
…And they said I was a fool for keeping a PR wire archive for half a decade. Fair enough on the concept, but the absolutely perception-shattering results aren’t to be understated. Though the Italian cosmic doom trio followed Eve with their two-part Neurot debut, Oro (reviews here and here) in 2012, I think Eve might still remain their definitive statement to date. The range they show, the tension in their builds, the sheer density of the mix and weight of their tones — it’s mad genius at work and unlike anything else in the heavy underground or otherwise. A landmark in the truest sense of the word. Ufomammut are a band I think would be much more influential if people could actually figure out how they construct the kind of noise-wash that permeates Eve.
As it stands, this record turns five years old this spring, and as Ufomammut move past their 15th anniversary and have recently finished work on a follow-up to Oro, it will be interesting to hear whether they’ve continued to expand their sound or, having paused to look back at their earlier material with the XV DVD (review here) and Magickal Mastery Tour live dates, if they might take influence from that and strip down some of the droning impulse ahead of their promised first North American tour. Did I say “interesting to hear?” Sorry. What I meant was “I can’t fucking wait to find out.” Yeah. That was it.
Whatever their wizardry conjures, Eve is a standout and was an early entry onto the list of the 2010s’ best albums of the decade. If you haven’t listened to it in a while, I hope you enjoy getting lost in its reaches all over again.
—
The Patient Mrs. and I watched the last Hobbit movie last night. Woof it sucked. There was, what, maybe 20 minutes of actual movie in the two-plus hours? And on the rare occasion dialogue made its way in among all the popping off of goblin heads in extended fight scenes, aerial shots of New Zealand (not complaining about that, New Zealand is fucking beautiful) and elf sashaying, lines like “I got this” induced more cringes than adrenaline. All I kept thinking was about the Deep Space 9 I wasn’t watching. And I frickin’ worshiped at the altar of Lord of the Rings. Just wasn’t enough there to make a third movie out of and you could tell it was drawn out to fill time. Hey bro, I’ll take a quality 100-minute movie over nearly three hours of hawt-is-good-ugly-is-bad fight scenes and needless Legolas time. Like anyone needed more Legolas.
Could just be I’m sour because I’m injured. The Patient Mrs. — because I’m afraid to leave the house by myself, apparently — and I spent the better part of last week in New Jersey. Actually it was family stuff, but the paranoia better suits my narrative, so fuck it. We come back this past Sunday night, it’s pouring and as we’re unloading the car after about five hours on the road, I fall down the outside stairs and do some excruciating ankle damage. We were in the ER until about 2AM Sunday night. Nothing broken. Got some crutches, some pain meds that we haven’t even picked up at the pharmacy and was sent on my merry way. Went to another doctor on Wednesday because it was still swollen and I was worried about ligament damage and it turned out all he wanted to talk about was how big my ass is. Super. Thanks. Yeah, I almost forgot about it, but any chance you could take a look at my fucking ankle? No? Okay, great.
So what does it all mean? For one thing, it means i’m not going to see High on Fire in Maine this weekend. Today’s really the first day I can put any weight on my left foot at all, and the thought of standing for four hours even for such a worthy cause seems like a good way to not continue healing. It also means that last night I was up until about 2:30AM setting things up to be posted today so that, let’s say around 3:30PM, I’d be able to knock off early and call it a week. What happens next? What shitty misadventure awaits? I don’t know and I don’t really care. All I know is I’ve had enough week and it’s time to hit reset.
Monday, look out for a Throat track stream, and, later in the week, one from Elder. I’m also planning to put up my 2015 most anticipated albums list, but I might push it back another week. We’ll see how tomorrow goes and if I can get a start, because it’s definitely a multi-day process.
Hope you dig the Ufomammut and have a tremendous goblin-free (unless it’s Orange Goblin, in which case, right on) weekend. Be safe, watch that bottom step, and we’ll see you back here Monday for more kvetching and riffs.
Posted in Reviews on November 13th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
The concert DVD is about as dead as dead gets. They still make them, and they’ll continue to for some time, but with streaming on demand, YouTube, festivals live-streaming their events and so on, bands might as well put out VHS tapes and at least get some retro novelty points out of the deal. All the same, every now and again there’s a worthy occasion — in the case of Italian cosmic doomers Ufomammut, it was their 15th anniversary — and it seems prudent that some band-sanctioned document of it exist into perpetuity. Thus arrives XV: 15 Years of Ufomammut on the band’s own Supernatural Cat imprint with minimalist artwork courtesy of their visual-arts alter-ego, Malleus; a rare moment of backward reflection from an otherwise relentlessly forward-thinking trio, who have become — and I say this with as much impartiality as I can muster — one of the worldwide heavy underground’s most pivotal acts. Their two-part 2012 full-length, Oro (reviews here and here) on Neurot was really just the latest step in a groundbreaking psychedelic progression that’s been underway since they started in 1999, their releases — 2000’s Godlike Snake, 2004’s Snailking, 2005’s Lucifer Songs, 2007’s Supernaturals Record One collaboration with Lento, 2008’s Idolum, 2010’s Eve (review here) and the aforementioned Oro — serving as landmarks of each stage of their development, their continued will for experimentation and outdoing themselves unwavering across each outing. So after a decade and a half, Ufomammut wanted to take a step back and see how far they’ve come before moving ahead again with their next record? Well, that seems fair.
Ufomammut‘s late-2013/early-2014 “Magickal Mastery Tour” was something special because where the trio of guitarist/keyboardist Poia, bassist/vocalist/keyboardist Urlo and drummer Vita generally keep their focus more recent when it comes to live shows, this time they dipped all the way back to Godlike Snake and the preceding 1999 Satan demo for “Superjunkhead” and covered a little taste of everything between that and “Sulphurdew” from Oro: Opus Alter. A single set spanning a seven-album run isn’t easy to put together, particularly when Ufomammut have grown a tendency to write long-form material, but they did it and for fans, it was something apart from their own version of the “ordinary.” If you’re an ardent disbeliever in the form of concert videos, XV isn’t likely to change your mind, but it’s something the band have clearly put thought and effort into, where so many are slapped together from three-camera shoots and just sort of plopped out there like an unbaited fishhook to see which fans will bite. The feel over the course of Ufomammut‘s 80-minute set is more like a music video. They run the performance footage, captured live at SOMS “Il Progresso” in Sarezzano, Italy, by longtime engineer Lorenzo Stecconi, through a range of psychedelic effects and intersperse strange still images, all the while bouncing between more cameras than I can count, GoPros, hand-helds, and stationary. It’s a feature-length, live music video more than a concert recording. If there was an audience that night in Sarezzano, they’re never showed. Possible the band rented out the space so they, as Malleus, and Barbra Baader Meinhof could have freer access with cameras, but I don’t know that.
They bounce gloriously around their catalog and unsurprisingly are planetary in their heaviness throughout, but again, if you’re absolutely unable to get on board with a concert DVD, their switches between color, black and white, blurs and visual swirls are probably going to leave you cold. Wisely, and I’ll admit more intriguing to me as well, is the documentary portion of XV. in which the band (with subtitles) tell their own story and check in with those who knew or helped them at some stage or another in their career. Their story isn’t one filled with drama — Poia and Urlo played together in a band called Judy Corda that broke up, they started Ufomammut, found a killer drummer in Vita, were well received and set about growing their sound — but there is a lot of humor and charm throughout. Of particular note is when The Flyeater, who apparently handled Korg for them for two shows, makes an appearance in the same luchador mask he wore on stage, and we get to see Stecconi, who has become a big part of Ufomammut‘s sound since making his debut behind the board for them with Idolum, which the band describes as their darkest album. If this is to be their moment of reflection, they make the most of it, and it’s fascinating to hear them putting their work in context with itself, moving from one record to the next while conscious of the creativity at play. They wind up discussing Oro and then move into some of the theory behind where they are as a band, playing live — there’s some Roadburn footage in there — and developing the visual side of their approach. At the very end, we even get to hear from Lu, who contributes to Malleus but not Ufomammut proper. She speaks over psychedelic visuals and backed by airy guitars, and they finish out by thanking everyone who’s helped them along the way and showing fan footage during the credits, people from around the world extolling the virtues of the band.
Honestly, I could probably do the same, if you wanted or if I haven’t already in this review. It’s hard not to think XV as closing a chapter in Ufomammut‘s career, but the truth of the matter is each record they do does the same thing: They make an album and then move on. With a new full-length due out next year as a follow-up to this and Oro, that evolution seems to be continuing unabated, and hearing the band talk about their processes and what goes into making them who they are, I look forward even more to finding out what the next stage might hold. And as for the concert DVD being dead? Well, sometimes these dead formats have a tendency to come back to life, and just in case, having a copy of XV on hand might not be the worst idea.
