Taking cues from legendary acts such as Neurosis and Electric Wizard, Italian Sludge-merchants Ufomammut release Idolum, their fifth full-length album, upon an unsuspecting world. With the raw aggression of a rabid wooly mammoth coupled with the psychedelic shadings of early Pink Floyd, Ufomammut’s sound churns and swells like an ocean of Post Metal muck, lapping at the jagged shoreline of despair and sheer, raw emotion.

The songs, however long, seem to have simple, repetitive arrangements carrying the aural tonnage along the 66 minutes and 4 second running time. This does not, however, bring boredom while listening to, I mean being beaten about the ears and soul by, Idolum. The parts, swirling in and out of each other, move and crescendo until the very blood in one’s vein’s starts to bubble and steam. One can feel the rage and desperation rising ever so slowly inside them as the music flows from one track to the next.

“Stigma” is a beast of an opening track, crushing everything it encounters. The mix is noticed early on as being almost bigger than any speakers can handle. “Ammonia” is sheer, psychedelic hypnotica, complete with female vocal layers giving the track a more haunting element. “Void…Elephantom”, all 27 minutes of it, imprisons the listener in its bottomless depths and holds them there until it subsides. It rumbles along from ungodly heavy riffs into droning atmospheres and back again and, as cliché as it sounds, is like a journey into the void. I would not be surprised by the need for some to scream in primal release once it’s all over.

All in all, this is an album not to be missed. To say its heavy would be a gross understatement of the facts. It’s an album that has to be taken in and processed, not simply listened to. I suggest headphones in the dark, that’s what I did. Most times I felt like I was being carried along by something much bigger than myself and, as I sit here writing this, I’m ready to go again.

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