Hailing from various locations in the USA, Avant-garde Death Metal duo "UMULAMAHRI" formed in 2025. This album, titled "Learning the Secrets of Acid" is their debut EP, and it has five songs. "Rot Shall Rule the Oily Voids" is first. The opening tones are harrowing, and absolutely brutal. Picture a person about to be bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer. It's not mindless, however, in the way that some Death Metal can sound. The vocals are guttural, filthy, and low, but the music undulates with a distinct rhythm, and it creates a soundscape that is alive. It might be akin to torture while you seem unconscious, but you feel every bit of it. The ending springs to life with vocal screams that could wake the dead.

"Bursting with Life's True Fruit" has a thick, full, and rich sound, augmented with repeated pig squeals in the guitars. It builds a hypnotic feeling, almost like a task that you are required to complete over and over again. Suddenly, it shifts, to machine gun drum strikes with background ambiance that is purely evil. They vary the pacing to keep you on your toes also. "VVVVRMS" has an opening that buzzes with anticipation and tension, like you are waiting to see the torturer's face and what implements he has brought with him to carve you up. Drums roll in with a quickened pace, but the other instruments stay hidden in the shadows. Gutturals break the vocal silence, and the backing synths are nothing short of pure blasphemy.

"Orifice Invocation" blasts forward with controlled chaos. It's the kind where the wheels seem like they are spinning off the careening bus, but somehow the band maintains control. They heighten your senses with the harrowing music, and then dull them with passages of stillness and atmosphere. The tension is created by not knowing what is around the corner. "Leaked Photo of Heaven" is the final song, and it begins with another harrowing and hasty sound. It settles into a groove of sorts, but that groove is death, with maggot eaten flesh and rotten carrion all about. It seems to get worse and more stench filled as it rolls along.

Thinking man's Death Metal? Most definitely. For me, the album plays like a post-apocalyptic landscape of death, disease, and ruin. What's left on earth is empty and desolate, but what scurries under the surface is very much alive. The genre boundaries for Death Metal are so constricting, but UMULAMAHRI forges their own path within the fire-scorched landscape with a clear vision and an unmatched intensity. Eternal Hell awaits the listener.