UMUR "Songs from the Black Hole" is the 11th full-length studio album by US groove metal act Prong. The album was released through SPV GmbH in March 2015. Prong released their last studio album "Ruining Lives" in April 2014, so it hasn´t even been a year since the release of that album, but "Songs from the Black Hole" isn´t a new studio album featuring original material but instead an album featuring cover tracks.

The 10 tracks on the 42:09 minutes long album is predominantly covers of hardcore and punk artists like Discharge, Black Flag, and Bad Brains, which isn´t surprising if you are familiar with the early output by Prong. The inclusion of "Seeing Red" by Killing Joke is also a matter of course, as Prong has obviously been very influenced by the post punk of that group throughout their career, but there are also a couple of more surprising covers featured on the album in "Vision Thing" by The Sisters of Mercy, and "Cortez the Killer" by Neil Young. Especially the latter stands out as one of the highlights of the album and I´d mention the cover of "Seeing Red" as another standout track, but the quality and entertainment level of the all the covers featured on "Songs from the Black Hole" is decent throughout.

The album is also well produced (maybe a bit too clean for some of the more hardcore oriented tracks) and "Songs from the Black Hole" is overall a good quality covers album by Prong. A couple of more not so obvious song inclusions would have made the album a bit more exciting overall (especially when you hear how great they are at performing both "Vision Thing" and "Cortez the Killer"), but it´s still a pretty good album as it is. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.