My favorite Italians are back with a new album! About 2 years ago I was introduced to the joys of Ufomammut through their excellent album Eve. I've been looking forward to hearing new material from them ever since and now the wait is over. Oro is their 6th album and is the first installment in a 2 part series. I really have no idea what the lyrical concept is behind Oro but the music is some of the heaviest shit out there. Lots of bands try to combine Black Sabbath heaviness with Pink Floyd trippyness but only Ufomammut and Yob do it the way I want to hear it. And as much as I like Yob, I like Ufomammut just a hair more. Probably has something to do with my Italian heritage. Even though these guys are from Northern Italy and I have Southern Italian roots, I can't help but love this band and consider them paisanos. I also had the pleasure of interviewing them for Ripple. They had a great sense of humor and even referred to themselves as Ufomammone (mama's boys).
Eve was basically a metalized version of Pink Floyd at Pompeii. Oro continues in that direction but is even heavier but with a strong cinematic feel. Album opener "Empireum" starts off like some electronic sounds that might possibly be influenced by the intro to Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner." This music would be great in a James Bond movie when they're introducing a sinister villain. The band kicks in about halfway through this 13 minute head trip with a slow crushing riff and tribal drumming. They follow it up with "Aureum," another long, slow, heavy one that picks up speed as it goes along. "Infearnatural" and "Magickon" are both about 7 minutes long and have some evocative vocals and samples buried in the mix. Some electronic melodies from earlier in the album are reintroduced with dramatic effect. The album wraps up with an exhausting 9 minute nightmare called "Mindomine." Even though the songs are long, the album never wears out its welcome. And just when you think it can get heavier or weirder it does. Over and over again.
Way back when I was a little boy, every summer I would accompany my grandmother to a farmers market in the Bronx near Yankee Stadium. She would buy bushels and bushels of tomatoes to make enough sauce for all her family and friends to last a year. As the youngest it was my job to lug all this stuff from the car into her basement. That shit was really heavy and it was always hotter than hell. This new Ufomammut album is ALMOST that heavy. If I could deal with that back then, you can deal with this now. Marone a mi!
--Woody
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