God bless the Italians. Even though my last name is MacDermott, I was raised by my Italian grandmother Emilia. She filled me with tons of Italian pride and the most incredible homemade food anyone could ever dream of. So it always makes me excited to be able to heap praise upon my paisanos who create great rock, whether it’s Raw Power, Negazione or the incredible new one from Ufomammut.
Eve is their fifth album and it’s a single 45 minute song divided into 5 separate sections. Picking up what Pink Floyd left behind at Pompeii, Ufomammut add a lot of unbridled aggression to their brand of doomy space rock. Part 1 starts off like a creepy film score and builds up intensity by adding more and more layers of instruments, chanting and sound effects before dissolving into the weirder Part 2. About halfway through an extremely heavy riff is introduced that pummels you for about 5 minutes.
Part 3 is another heavy one with some tortured vocals and some bleating sci-fi sound effects. Part 4 could almost be the single off the album. It’s only 4 minutes long and has a deep, heavy groove and some frenzied guitar soloing that sounds like someone gave David Gilmour a bunch of crystal meth. Part 5 is a 13 minute journey that starts off slow but ominous, then gets heavier with a bunch of urgent voice samples and ultimately expires with some hypnotic creepy guitar patterns.
Eve is the full cosmic experience. There are many band s (too many, in fact) that try to merge Black Sabbath heaviness with Pink Floyd/Can/Hawkwind spaciness that ultimately are kinda dull. This record has no filler and sounds better each time you play it.
--Woody
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