Ufomammut

Ufomammut originated in Tortona, Italy in 1999, shaped by the space-tinged stoner rock of Kyuss and Monster Magnet as well as progressive rock figures including Pink Floyd and early UFO. Urlo (bass/vocals), Poia (guitar/keyboards), Alien (keyboards/guitar), and Vita (drums) formed the group. Their debut Godlike Snake appeared in 2000 to strong notices, after which the band toured only occasionally while placing distinctive tracks on various compilations and tribute albums, most prominently the Blue Explosion tribute to Blue Cheer.

Recorded in 2003, their second album Snailking replaced Alien with longtime producer Hendrix R. and reached listeners via Music Cartel the following year. Late 2005 brought the DVD/mini-album Lucifer Songs, at which point Ufomammut had again become a trio.

Two years afterward the three musicians joined fellow Italian band Lento for Supernaturals: Record One. Less than twelve months later they delivered Idolum, their first full-length in five years; the record openly referenced Pink Floyd through soaring female vocals à la “Great Gig in the Sky” supplied by Rose Kemp while also signaling their interest in post-rock. In 2010 they released their most ambitious work to date, Eve, a single forty-five-minute piece segmented into five movements whose central figure combined Lucifer’s rebellious traits with Prometheus’s sharing of secret knowledge.

European and American tours met with such enthusiasm that Ufomammut extended their progressive leanings further. 2012’s Oro was conceived as one continuous ten-movement piece and appeared on Neurot in two installments, Oro: Opus Primum in April followed by Oro: Opus Alter in September, the latter continuing directly from the former. Nearly two years of global touring and festival appearances followed. The band entered the studio at the end of 2014 and surfaced with Ecate in spring 2015, again built around a single theme; the title is the pre-Greek name for the goddess Hecate, and the songs examine her mythic capacity to pass between the human world and to shape both beings and events ruled by emotion.

After strong showings at Roadburn and other festivals the trio returned to Italy.

In fall 2017 they issued 8. Though it was the band’s eighth release, the concept expanded once more: eight tracks, each assigned its own symbolic motif drawn from the number’s attributes. The immersive pieces connect without pause, suggesting a single extended jam. The numeral’s horizontal shape morphing into the algebraic ∞, a plane curve meeting at a central point and commonly called the infinity symbol, further reflects the album’s uninterrupted flow. Ufomammut stressed in accompanying statements that the title carries no single pronunciation and should instead be voiced in every language—“Eight” in English, “otto” in Italian, “acht” in German, “huif” in French, and so on.