Ufomammut: "Ecate"

This is the Italian doom trio's seventh album since forming in 1999. They play a thick stony brand of doom somewhere between Yob and Zoroaster. The ten minute opener is almost an instrumental as the vocals are thrown way behind the guitars , then the faint whispering of vocals enters in the songs final three minutes. They find some interesting sounds and seem to be off to a pretty good start here. The riffs are pretty basic and droning, their signature move seems to be distracting you from this fact by swirling some sonic surrealism around your ears. They raise the rumble on the bellowing trudge of "Plouton". The build momentum until they have sped past the boundaries of doom and are in more sludge country, which truth be told is what this felt like from the get go.

"Chaosecret" breaks down into a lingering crawl with samples dripping off of it's monolithic lumber. slow boiling the vocals take their place in the back of your hallucinating mind. One again their formula proves to be build things up in the final three minutes and lead you on for the first seven. The vocals almost industrial like. Distant and distorted the fall between being shouted through a machine and sung. "Temple" finds the band dragging the thick slabs of fuzzed out distortion through the post- apocalyptic landscape they seem to be wandering in. The song hits a groove that it speeds up and plays around with, but five minutes into it I found myself drifting away from the song. They do add some accents and punches in the  final three minutes but at that point it feels like too little to late. Though I do like the industrial feeling of the production.

"Revelation" is just a spacey interlude that sets you up for the tense and winding riff of "Daemons". This tight palm muted affair has a similar attack that Tool or Kyuss might employ. the more the song progresses I an hear that it's "Opiate" era Tool I am referring to most likely "Piece of Me". It might be the most conventional song on the album , but it is also the most infectious and you can't help but bang your head to it a little.I am a little split on this as I am torn between lack of originality and sound so I'll leave it up to you as to which is more important. If originality is the most important factor then around this down to a 7.5, if the overall sound is and you don't care where you might have heard it before then give it an 8.