As soon as the first track hit 3.34 I knew that I was going to like this band: they hit a groove that sounds like some celestial divinity started hurling moons at the sun for no other reason other than that they were the heaviest thing to hand. On top of this the vocals sound like they are being transported in from another world, echoing louder and louder in a struggle to pierce the surface. From this you can probably perceive that I have come to hold ‘Idolum’ by Ufomammut as a very important and unique record.

I had picked this CD up with wary hands, after having heard that these guys were ‘Acid- Doom’. When the word ‘acid’ is used as an adjective to describe something, it typically means that whilst having cataclysmic significance to the author of the thing: the rest of us end up clutching at frayed straws. The reason that the straws are frayed is from the frustration that comes when something mysterious and potentially beautiful appears to be tantalisingly out of reach; it is my opinion that pieces of art like these are useless without chemical enhancement. Thankfully Ufomammut manage to steer clear of such a category.

Helping them do so is the production values of ‘Idolum’. The focus here seems to be on the weight of the sound rather than purely striving for the merits of distortion. The crispness of the sound is vital on the ‘Ammonia’ and ‘Nero’ tracks, where an ambient hum swirls beneath the chomping riff. Very impressive. Naming the band Ufomammut (the rough Italian translation is UFO+ Mammoth) was a shrewd move: I can’t think of a better metaphor for their sound than a mammoth stomping around on a spaceship somewhere in the heavens above.
This album needs to be listened to loud and many times, I have done both and was so drawn in to the experience that I am now scouring music stores for their entire back-catalogue.