Umbra Et Imago
Machina Mundi (SPV)
by Scott Hefflon
German Goth/industrial pioneers/sex show. Part less-metal Rammstein (just to start somewhere, ya know?), part “hey, look at the tits!,” Umbra Et Imago may get a little tiresome after a while (and they sometimes take forever to get into the groove, favoring long intros and spoken word growling and trippy sound effects), but there’s something about German (I think that’s German) that makes anything Liebach or any of these dudes snarl sound bad-ass and gutturally sexy. Could be repeatedly asking if we want fries with that (remember when you realized how shallow Rammstein lyrics were when they growled in English?), but as “Don’t Stop to Learn” stresses (again and again), um, don’t stop to learn. So while it’s rather repetetive dark mood music, I think the point is to put it on when you have far better things to do than actually listening to it, dig?
(www.spv.com)