“EVE is the fifth album of Ufomammut. EVE is a multiform 45 minutes long single track, structured in 5 main movements flowing one into the other. Dedicated to the First Woman on Earth, who brought knowledge to Mankind, rebelling to her Creator, EVE is a further step in the band’s sound research after the primordial riffs of Snailking and the massive atmosphere of Idolum.” I don’t have to read the description of the CD’s sleeve to be excited about its contents. I’ve been following the life and times of UFOmammut for as long as I’ve been keeping this website. I’ve described the band to friends as “The Italian Boris” or “Kyuss in space!” You can imagine how overjoyed I was when I found EVE sitting in my mailbox. I grabbed it and loaded it into my car’s stereo as Nicci and I drove across town for a drink Friday night. Within two minutes, she asked me to please turn it off. I needn’t hear anything else. It was that good.
The recorded history of UFOmammut is a series of increasingly awesome drug-induce space metal. From the moment you hear “Blotch” off 1999’s Snail King for the first time, you are transported to the deepest, sludgiest, most psychedelic recess of outer space. Each successive album, from Godlike Snake to 2008’s Idolum has shown marked development while keeping true to their essential foundation of doom, drone, druggy cosmic wonder.
So, what about EVE, you ask? Maybe the newness hasn’t worn off yet, but I’m apt to declare this is the band’s best effort yet. The opening movement kicks in, all thunderous and VUs-in-the-red distorted. In movement two, the crushing white noise builds like a maelstrom. Beautiful drones and creepy organ inch forward — for nine minutes — until its grand crescendo. Part three is straight riffs and little experimentation. The remainder of the album is filled with peaks and valleys, samples, chants, and blistering feedback. Figure that, upon completing EVE, you’re going to have to take a few moments to gather yourself before you can go back to living your life.
EVE is not an album, it is a voyage. They are the space pilots, and you have been strapped in for a long interstellar flight. If those lofty, unearthly metaphors aren’t enough to sell my point, I guess you could just say that UFOmammut are like the Pink Floyd of stoner rock/metal. In fact, the concept of EVE was inspired by Pink Floyd’s Meddle. “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.”
Do yourself a favor and get into this band if you have not already. I don’t know where UFOmammut will go from here, but I look forward to finding out if they can pull off an album better than this one. EVE might just be the first candidate for the best album of 2010. Don’t panic.
EVE, the latest slab of epic psychedlia from Italy’s UFOmammut will be released on May 5th, 2010 by Supernatural Cat.
UFOmammut – II (Track 2)
