Guitars tuned down lower than a witch’s tit? Check. Bass that rumbles like a steamroller crushing your ribcage? Check. Drumming as insane as The Joker on amphetamines? Check. Vocals that sound like a constipated Satan trying to have a shit? Check, check, and quadruple check.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Learning the Secrets of Acid, the new EP from Death Metal outfit Umulamahri — and holy hell, what a ride it is.
Now, I’m not sure if we’re meant to take that title literally — as in, acid acid, flesh-melting acid — or if the lads were dabbling in something slightly more recreational while writing this thing. Because Learning the Secrets of Acid sounds exactly like a bad trip gone brilliantly wrong. It’s a waking psychedelic nightmare, a feverish descent into distorted madness that feels like a thousand worms burrowing beneath your skin and feasting on what they find underneath. And I fucking love it.
From the very pummelling of Rot Shall Rule the Oily Voids, Umulamahri make their intentions clear: this is Death Metal that doesn’t so much attack you as it does devour you whole. The guitars are impossibly heavy, tuned so low you could lose your soul between the strings. Every riff feels like it’s crawling out of some subterranean hell-pit, coated in slime and pure malice. But here’s the kicker — for all the filth and distortion, there’s precision too. These aren’t just random chunks of noise; the riffs are crafted, layered, alive.
The drumming is pure chaos — a nonstop assault of blast beats, fills, and tempo shifts that hit like a series of controlled detonations. There’s a real sense of tension throughout the EP, like the entire thing could collapse into total madness at any second — and that’s exactly why it works.
Then there’s the bass. Oh, the bass. It doesn’t just support the songs; it drives them, like some unholy machine grinding flesh into paste. It’s thick, distorted, and omnipresent, a sonic sludge that glues everything together while making sure your internal organs vibrate just enough to make you you wonder if the legend of the ‘brown note’ might be true after all.
Vocally, it’s as disgusting as it should be — guttural, rasping, completely inhuman. The delivery is so vile it’s almost comical, like Satan himself trying to communicate mid-exorcism. But buried within that filth is actual emotion — rage, mania, and this weird sense of joy, like the band know exactly how horrible this all sounds and are absolutely reveling in it.
What makes Learning the Secrets of Acid stand out, though, is the atmosphere. For all its brutality, there’s an undercurrent of psychedelia — subtle, but there. You’ll catch it in the off-kilter time signatures, the strange tonal shifts, and those eerie little moments of space between the chaos. It’s not psychedelic in the trippy, hippie sense — more like being trapped in a bad dream where the walls breathe and the floor screams.
Each track flows into the next with this diseased momentum, dragging you deeper and deeper until you’re not entirely sure what’s up or down anymore. It’s filthy, it’s grotesque, it’s utterly fucking hypnotic.
By the end of the EP, you’re left feeling violated, exhausted, and weirdly euphoric — like you’ve survived something you shouldn’t have. And really, isn’t that the point?
Learning the Secrets of Acid is available now via the Umulamahri Bandcamp page.
CHOICE CUT: Orifice Invocation
BLACK METAL ARCHIVES VERDICT: A hallucinogenic horror show wrapped in riffs, slime, and pure evil. Learning the Secrets of Acid is as heavy as it is deranged — a glorious, skull-crushing trip into madness. Umulamahri don’t play Death Metal. They dissolve it, inhale it, and spew it back out covered in acid burns.
