Warthur After hearing their oltreLuna, which is surely a 2017 album of the year candidate if there ever was one, I wanted to go back to hear Progenie Terrestre Pura's debut album, UMA. This boasts a different lineup to the followup; whereas that was recorded by a trio, this consists of instrumentalist Eon[0] (who'd drop the nickname and be plain old Davide Colladon for the next album) and vocalist Nex[1], who would leave the project after the Asteroidi EP.

What is presented here is a solid first step on the road to the blend of psybient electronic music and atmospheric black metal that made oltreLuna so brilliant. At points the rough edges between the genres are still evident, but otherwise it's an intriguing genre mashup which manages the trick of integrating atmospheric black metal's occasional fascination with ambient music with the furious power of it, rather than keeping ambient and metal tracks separate as is so often the case in the subgenre.

Nightfly MMA Reviewer's Challenge: Album selected by 666sharon666.

Released in 2013 U.M.A. is the debut and so far only album from Italian post black metal duo Progenie Terrestre Pura. Duo’s seem more common in black metal and I sometimes wonder how these bands can pull it off in a live setting. However, it’s of little consequence here as it’s all about the album.

Only five tracks in total though all are pretty long from thirteen down to seven minutes. This is black metal of the atmospheric variety with a strong spacey feel. Progenie Terrestre Pura aren’t in a hurry and prefer a slow burn approach. Opener, named after the band gives us over three minutes of trippy cosmic ambience before anything resembling black metal kicks in. You could be forgiven for thinking you were listening to a Tangerine Dream album to this point. When the metal does kick in its initially fairly generic black metal with blast beats flailing away, tremolo picked guitars and typical rasping vocals. No bad thing in itself but my ears picked up more when the pace slowed somewhat with heavier riffing augmented by the spacey synth lines adding some haunting melody to the proceedings. At thirteen minutes Sovrarobotizzazione is the longest of the lot and follows a similar approach. Whilst it sometimes feels like the parts are randomly thrown together as if you could mix and match in any order you like the number of changes does help maintain interest and some of the quieter sections in particular become quite captivating at times with some well-placed clean guitar parts.

The instrumental sections generally take precedence over the vocals. In fact La Terra Rossa Di Marte has none and is seven minutes of ambience overlaid with spacey synth lines and tasteful guitar picking. Whether this has a place on a black metal album is debateable and likely to alienate fans of the purer variety but then it is a genre that covers many bases and not generally afraid to experiment so why not. I’d have preferred real drums over what almost certainly sounds like programmed but I guess in the context of the songs they add to the futuristic feel of the album. Droni is one of the best song on the album. Whilst is doesn’t deviate from the general formula of the first two tracks it seems to gel and flow better and packing more punch too. Whilst prog elements are a feature of the album as a whole they’re most apparent in Sinapsi Divelte and also features some cleaner vocal work and instrumental sections less typical of black metal at times.

Overall despite one or two moments where I was shouting get on with it! I enjoyed U.M.A. quite a lot. Certainly enough to keep an eye open for future releases. Not your typical black metal by any stretch and probably will go over the heads of many fans of the genre but more prog orientated metal fans could find much to enjoy here.

adg211288 U.M.A. is the debut full-length album by Italian black metal act Progenie Terrestre Pura. It was released in 2013, funnily enough exactly two years to the day since their prior demo release, the simply titled Promo 2011, came out. Both the tracks from the demo reappear on U.M.A. bookending the album. Progenie Terrestre Pura consists of just two members, the enigmatically named Eon[0] (music) and Nex[1] (vocals). U.M.A. stands for Uomini, Macchine, Anime. It means Men, Machines, Souls, in case you were wondering.

The music on U.M.A. is primarily atmospheric black metal, but there are also progressive metal elements to be found. Outside of the metal spectrum the band also draws on psychedelic ambient (psybient) and space ambient music. Black metal bands have long proven that such ambient forms of music work well when they play atmospheric black metal, with Burzum being, I think, the most well known example, and it’s no different for Progenie Terrestre Pura, who on U.M.A. provide an excellent mix of the styles, including the fully ambient track La Terra Rossa Di Marte in the middle of the five track album. That’s right, just five tracks, but over fifty minutes of music, so expect some really sprawling compositions here including the thirteen minute dead and album highlight Sovrarobotizzazione.

The vocal delivery from Nex[1] comes across as being very much integrated into the overall atmosphere that Progenie Terrestre Pura create. His growl is not really typical of black metal in that he has a whisper like quality, or sounds as if he’s some distance away from the music, if you get my drift. Perhaps a better description would be is that most in music you can put the vocals on a different layer to the instruments, and that layer is the one above the music so what when the vocalist is delivering lines, they’re the centre of attention. The music is behind them in the mix. It’s different on U.M.A., as if Nex[1] is on a layer below the music. Or perhaps on the same one, it’s more important to this description to make clear where his vocals aren’t in the mix rather than where they actually are. It’s an approach that is played to great effect on the album in any case, whether you understand my attempts to describe what it sounds like or not, which as you may have gathered I’m finding quite difficult. There are also some clean vocals used during Sovrarobotizzazione and Sinapsi Divelte, which retain the same effect.

On U.M.A. Progenie Terrestre Pura have crafted something really special in my opinion. Not only is their take on atmospheric/ambient black metal more unique than most, not to mention a refreshing change from the current run of post-rock infused blackgaze acts, but it’s also a mighty fine slab of black metal which at year’s end looks set to be included among the best black metal releases of the year. U.M.A. is atmospheric black metal with true emphasis on the atmospheric part. An exceptional grade rating is deserved.

94/100

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven: http://metaltube.freeforums.org/progenie-terrestre-pura-u-m-a-t2985.html)