Dedicated admirers of Ufomammut’s career to date are unlikely to be steeling themselves for a radical change of tack on the band’s aptly titled eighth album. Purveyors of a bruising but acutely psychedelic strain of pummelling, bowel-rattling doom metal, the Italian trio have consistently come closer than most to emulating the inexorable grind of tectonic plates as we spin pointlessly in an unknowable universe. These are, it hardly needs saying, the kind of things that enter one’s mind after the umpteenth bong hit of the night, and it’s difficult to imagine a more apposite soundtrack than the thrillingly queasy Psyrcle: eight minutes of churning, wildly distorted repetition punctuated with brief bursts of meditative restraint and slightly longer bursts of feral cacophony.
Despite their dogged commitment to the art of caving people’s heads in with massive riffs, Ufomammut are an ingenious bunch, and this is one of their most absorbing strides toward oblivion yet.
