Santo Dio. Ufomammut. ORO: Opus Primum.

Mongers of cosmic doom Ufomammut may be although to tag them with altogether superfluous earthly affiliation, they hail from the temperamental northern climes of Italy. Not that it shows in the ungodly initial blasts of Empireum, the subtly overwhelming opener to ORO: Opus Primum nor in the gruff vocal incoherencies that later enshroud the sound. The first chapter of a binary release, this evolutionary opus centres itself upon the double entendre of its palindromic epithet: suitably signifying 'gold' in their native italiano and the first person singular of the verb 'pray' in its progenitive Latin, Opus Primum is flecked with a divine darkness and, as every skull-bludgeoning, blood-curdling shriek of sanctimonious distortion thrashes against your being, down on both knees with hands clasped together is a quite feasible resultant posture on exposure to its unremitting impressionism.

Akin to Earth's two-part Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light effort were all hope displaced by a vivifying sense of impending Armageddon, it's one to lodge an unflappable faith in; to bow down before; to lose mortal sanity to. The aforementioned Empireum extends out over fourteen exhausting minutes as Vita's insistent tom thuddery converses with extraterrestrial signals cloaked in thick static, bursts of devastating guitar, eerie synths. Pioneering in both approach and aesthetic, it's these underlying processed tones that differentiate Ufomammut from others experimenting with the more metallic elements of the infinitely expansive periodic table of music and indeed there's an almost scientific precision to much of Opus Primum: from the harsh yet unhurried crescendoing of Aureum to the sludgy drones of Infearnatural, the record is endowed with an outward appearance that's calculated if categorically ne'er calm. And as the crashing punch-like rolls of Mindomine lay this first instalment to rest you could quite cogently be left 'praying' for Opus Alter and its September release date to hasten up.