ALBUM REVIEW: Hidden – Ufomammut
Forming in the historic town of Tortona – in one of Italy’s most northerly provinces, Alessandria – in 1999, UFOMAMMUT are super-heavyweights in the global doom and stoner scene. For 25 years the band have been laying down colossal riffs and fuzz-laden blues melodies that would shake the foundations of the entire Piemonte region. 2024 marks the Italian outfit’s quarter of a century anniversary and they’re celebrating this milestone by unleashing Hidden – a mercilessly heavy and sludgy album. Traversing the depths of space and time through sonic exploration and experimentation, Hidden marks a significant high point in the band’s career and is a fitting testament to the constant evolution of UFOMAMMUT over the last 25 years.
Hidden is UFOMAMMUT’s 13th album and marks a change in the band’s songwriting processes. Darker and increasingly heavier, the Italian quartet strip doom back to basics, dial up the fuzz and let rip. UFOMAMMUT make sure to hammer the point home that you’re listening to a gut-punching doom album as the central focus is crushing heaviness that sends you back to the stone age. Yet it is surprisingly nuanced in its concepts; exploring the vastness of space and time, it could potentially be an allegorical tale. Songs like Mausoleum feature the sounds of laughter and human interaction, but they seem far away, as if they’re part of a painful hallucination of a bygone happiness.
UFOMAMMUT get heavier and heavier as the album goes on, as if spiralling out of control with a weed-addled mind. The album’s two distinct halves froth at the mouth with a youthful aggression that harks back to the band’s earlier years – rooted in albums such as Snailking (2004) and Lucifer Songs (2006). Rejuvenated with this new and frenzied energy, UFOMAMMUT make sure every riff hits with a merciless venom. While darkness has always been a feature in the band’s music, Poia (guitars), Urlo (bass, vocals, FX and synths), Levre (drums) and Ciccio (soundlord) have delved deeper into the barbaric, slab-dragging realms of sludge, creating a sonic barrage that wreaks havoc on your eardrums.
Even so, they’ve not completely abandoned the atmospheric elements of their sound. The most haunting and eerie song on the album is Soulost. With its long and twisting synth introduction, it morphs into a riffing juggernaut that makes your spine shiver with its screaming guitar lead and pounding rhythmic drones. It conjures up imagery of the apocalypse or your last breath of air in space before you explode. Throughout Hidden the synths and sound effects give the album a cinematic vibe, which – when UFOMAMMUT’s concept is considered – brings to mind doomed space missions stuck in time vortexes. It is an intense and explosive experience, with the sludgier elements being wonderfully balanced with the darker psychedelic parts.
Hidden opens up with the 10-and-a-half-minute monolith Crookhead. Like an orchestral suite, the song has several movements that go through various moods and dynamic shifts that unleash a haunting and harrowing tale of a man lost in his own mind. This is followed by the equally brain-pulverising Kismet. Following a similar formula to the previous track, Kismet explores the frenzied and feverish emotions attached to a strange and uncanny dream; keeping your emotions on edge, it’s an intense track and a trademark UFOMAMMUT song. This is followed by Spidher, a slow, trudging track that explores the hypnotic effect of the magic of an enchantress. The swirling riffs give you the sensation of being wrapped up in her web, desirous from her venom as the darkness closes in.
The aforementioned Mausoleum begins the second half of the album. At nearly 11 minutes, this intensely atmospheric and sludgy track is a highlight of the album. With lyrics being screeched at you, it sounds like an anguished voice howling in the void. Each riff slams hard, so by the time Leeched kicks in you are feeling pretty bludgeoned. Leeched is a straightforward and sludgy track that captures the band’s newly found rawness and new songwriting direction. Album closer Soulost finishes the record with a harrowing level of emotional pain, set to the backdrop of its spine tingling synths, it’ll leave your soul feeling drained and empty.
UFOMAMMUT have demonstrated why they are one of Europe’s super-heavyweights in the doom and stoner scene. The 25-year veterans have composed an intense slab of gloomy, sludgy doom that should satiate the appetites of fans old and new.
Rating: 8/10
Hidden is set for release on May 17th via Supernatural Cat Records.
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