Ufomammut - Eve

Release Date: May 5th, 2010
Label: Supernatural Cat Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  Eve

Total playing time:  44:42

Reviewer: Matt

Italy’s Ufomammut has been toiling in obscurity for years now, having released five albums prior to their new album, Eve, a concept album based on the Judeo-Christian mother of humanity.  Eve is highly recommended for fans of stoner doom; other listeners may find it too monotonous and one-dimensional to rise above background music.

What connection the music has to the concept is a mystery, as the five subdivisions of the album are untitled and the vocals are buried in the mix, making the lyrics incomprehensible.  For me Eve conjures up images of hotboxed flying saucers and not any of the images typically associated with the Fall of Man, and Ufomammut’s Electric-Wizard-meets-early-Pink-Floyd seems a curious style with which to tackle this story.

Putting aside its theme, Eve will definitely please fans of the genre.  The album relies on repetition of groovy, mammoth-sized riffs that meander along aimlessly, all the while building momentum toward a thematic resolution.  Ufomammut deftly create a spacey ambience, weaving sound effects into their heaviest passages and breaking up the heaviness with dreamy interludes.

The problem with Eve is that it utilizes too few riffs with too little variation among them.  It’s typical of the genre, I suppose (which is why I enthusiastically recommended Eve to those fans), but to these ears a handful of riffs isn’t enough to sustain my attention over a full-length album, particularly where the vocals are so sparse.

Some people really get into this style and appreciate the trance-like quality of repetitious, droning doom riffs steeped in the smoky haze of a THC-laden production.  I don’t, and I prefer when artists tell a complete tale with their music to when they give you the soundtrack and leave you to fill in the gaps.

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April 15, 2010