For those who stopped paying attention to Mastodon when they started getting all proggy and had the nerve to feature twerking in their music videos, help is at hand from Austin, Texas power-trio Unmothered who churn out some seriously hefty sludge on new EP UMBRA (self-released), a blink and you’ll miss it slice of blackened southern riffs, pummelling tribal drums and angry, snarled vocals.
Featuring a mere three tracks, UMBRA is presumably stop-gap release before the trio get their arses in gear and record a new full-length. They already have one long player to their name in their self-titled 2012 effort, and fans of the dark, sludgey tones captured on that release will be all over this like a hillbilly on fresh road kill.
Opening track ‘Magnetar’, named after a neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field wields a seriously catchy riff that stops and starts between booming percussion fills before the band march off into the unknown with some vaguely Minsk-esque tribal effects giving things a primitive and primal feel.
Next track ‘Huntress’ is thankfully nothing like the lame mainstream wannabes of the same name, but instead features a selection of pounding riffs that fellow Southern grizzlies Black Tusk would sell their most potent moonshine for. Keeping still to this one is pretty much impossible so it’s probably a good thing it only lasts for just over two minutes.
Last up is the gradually building crush of ‘Scarp’ which toys around with a menacing discordant riff for a couple of minutes before wandering off into the swamp, replete with ominous background percussion, stark melodies and muffled spoken word before everything finishes in a blaze of glory that harks back to the glory days of Remission-era Mastodon.
Not content to blindly recycle the usual clichés of their genre but at the same time not straying too far from the path, Unmothered know it’s the riffs that matter and they have plenty of big dirty ones for you to cop an earful of.
7.0/10
JAMES CONWAY