UBOA.
Hearing that name, when either murmured or seeing it written out should strike equal measures of both utmost dread and gleeful fascination to the heart of anyone encountering it. The facts speak for themselves, as UBOA has been carving her own path through the collective audience’s flesh for the past decade with various collaborators along the way, with 2023’s The Origin of My Depression, 2024’s Impossible Light, and this year’s All the Dead Melt Down as Rain not only having been on constant repeat in this household, but made much deserved waves in the sonic underground focused on experimental and expressive death industrial noise music.
UBOA has been nothing if not productive and consistent throughout its years of existence, and the latest addition to that ever-growing pool of thrilling and shiver-inducing, absolutely scorching material, is The Dissolution of Eternity, a new split with her Australian peers in Whitehorse, to be released via Tartarus and Sweatlung on August 29. Today, we are delighted to bring you not one, but two songs from UBOA‘s side of the split. So be prepared for aural horrors to come, and hit play from below;
Rather unsurprisingly, both “Petplay Polycule Open Fire” and “Wasted Potential” are absolutely devastating pieces of musical annihilation, leaving you wrecked in a state of disbelief and quiet catharsis. If you’ve previously found home in UBOA‘s unrelenting concoctions, you’ll undoubtedly do so here as well. And if you haven’t, well, then you wouldn’t be here to begin with.
The songs represent the flip sides of the same coin, as explained alongside the backstory by Xandra;
‘These two songs open my side of the split and act essentially as two parts of the same thing. It is a throwback to my early sludge days that is designed to complement Whitehorse’s side. The first is a quick industrial sludge introduction. Pete (Whitehorse) joins me as a backing vocalist on “Wasted Potential”, which is more drone-doom. The rest of the split is mostly more melodic and ethereal, but still dominated by heavy baritone guitars.
‘Lyrically – my side is a lesbian t4t dystopian science fiction antifascist love story based on a series of recurring dreams. When I wrote them, Trump had not been elected and it seemed less real. The first song is about a queer orgy interrupted by black ops, who are searching for the former lover of the protagonist. The former lover, Evelyn, is a psychic human weapon. They torture her in “Wasted Potential”, despite our protagonist not knowing her whereabouts. The rest of the split details their origin and their fate. It’s dumb as hell, but I wanted to not trauma dump on this one. Some upcoming releases will be set in the same universe.
‘I’m so proud of this split – and psyched to have everybody hear the rest of it.‘
The cut-up assault and full frequency barrage on “Petplay Polycule Open Fire” is guaranteed to bring a smile to any hardened noise enthusiast’s face, as “Wasted Potential” towers on in a more death industrial/doom manner. Each song represent different angles on UBOA‘s output, yet are unmistakingly coming from the same source. The festering rage present throughout the songs has a very distinct signature emphasis on it, and they cover quite a bit of both familiar and new ground during the just shy of seven-minute summed duration. There’s simply too much to unpack when it comes to UBOA and what shapes her artistic vision and execution (but her Bandcamp page’s release notes offer rather ample info, so read into it), but it goes without saying that this fine pair of songs will leave you whimpering yet asking for more, as seems to be the case with this artist more often than not.
