UFOMAMMUT : "Fenice"

The Italian band's 9th album finds them continuing further down a darker, heavier and more experimental path. Even better is the fact they are not taking the most obvious routes to get to these places, which is more progressive than bands who throw a bunch of notes and solos in to be labelled as such. it carries a more sludge like weight to it's crunch. It was almost the end of the song before I realized it was an instrumental.  The second track is more of a interlude, with the next actual song being "Pyschostasia" which is almost more of a shoe gaze sounding song in the way it hypnotically drones on. I can hear a little Hawkwind influence in their so it is not like they just went straight up My Bloody Valentine with it. The vocals help for ma trippy background layer than demanding the spotlight. It does build into something more dynamic and rocks out. 

"Metamorpheonix" has a great sound. As a song it builds off onr drone and gradually increases the intensity int a swell. The vocals present but in more of a manner than reminds me of old Pink Floyd. It crashes into the song after it "Pyramind" which took a couple listens to figure out where one song ended and the other began.  It takes a about two minutes into this song before it ebbs down enough to take a turn to developing itself into something rather than just running off the momentum established in the previous song. If you are a regular reader here then you know how I feel about bands being sonically heavy rather than just heavy metal. You can have booth and in some places what is going down here touches upon it. 

 I would say they are rocking in a direction towards space rock here, so might owe more to say Hawkwind than Slayer. The sounds like they re calling out to you from another dimension rather than just being the narration of a song. The vocals go into a more commanding scream in the last minute of the song. 

This is not going down as their most melodic album by any means. Their trippiest , well so far it looks that way. I guess with everything going on in the world today some mind expansion is in order. "Empyros" does make an attempt to be a song, it is pretty short and sweet and feels more like they had a cool idea that they wanted on the album, so I will let it count as a song on this album for the purpose of this review. Even then in scoring this album I will still go ahead and round this up to a 9.5, since it is once of those lucky accidents where a band decides to grow in the direction of my musical tastes. This album is being released May 6th on Neurot Records.