Ural Umbo is the duo of Reto Mäder and Steven Hess, who some of you might recognize as a member of Locrain, Haptic and On. To call them a dark experimental project would technically be correct, but it doesn't quite do them justice. "Dark experimental" gets thrown around a lot (hell, it's getting thrown around a lot on this list alone), but like all such descriptors it threatens to reduce a band's sound into a pigeonhole that sheers off the individual uniqueness of a group, which is often what makes one group or artists better than the next bunch of guys armed with electronics and guitar pedals who have an appreciation for both Burzum and Penderecki. So yeah, Ural Umbo is a dark experimental duo, but their approach is more organic, more fully realized, and, frankly, scarier sounding than their peers. If you thought Locrian was dark, you haven't heard Ural Umbo. This is brutal nightmarish music that draws on soundtrack, industrial, black metal, doom, drone and krautrock that ends up being the most dynamic and unique sounding collection of sounds that I have heard in the whole "dark experimental" genre. While Mäder is playing with a wide swath of instrumentation that resembles a small orchestra, Hess' massive sounding drums blows it all up with a sense of heated urgency. Even when things aren't smashing and crashing all around you, the sound is tense and creepy, like the best horror soundtrack never made for a film. I'm not saying that an album called "Delusion Of Hope" will give you any comfort in the dead of winter, but it will put you on edge like the protagonist fighting for his or her life against unknown evil in a horror movie, and that may be exactly what you need to beat back the lethargy that accompanies the dark days ahead, or you could just listen to this and succumb to the darkness altogether. Either way, you need this.
"Self Fulfilling Prophecy"
No comments:
Post a Comment