Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s new EP Curses is short and smeared in shadows. It clocks in at just over ten minutes, with six tracks, two of which are barely intros or outros. It’s barely enough time to suggest that Ruban Nielson and crew are sniffing around darker corners lately.

The mood gets set immediately with “AURA,” an unnerving opener that sounds like someone plucking a metal wire stretched across an abandoned attic. It has the brittle edge of a Koto and a jagged tension that keeps folding in on itself with distorted electronics. Then Nielson wails—“MY EYEEEES”—like he’s being dragged into a burning light. It’s a bit melodramatic but still a fun intro. You can tell right away this isn’t a “go skipping through a field of daisies” kind of listen, unless those daisies are wilted, blood-specked, and growing out of a cursed grave.

The real teeth of the EP come with “ONE HUNDRED BATS” and “BOYS WITH THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WOLVES.” Both lean hard into Sabbath-style riffage, dark and doom-laced, and Nielson goes full cryptic with lines like “Tears of blood” and “A hundred bats starve inside / Drown in crimson wine.” I really enjoy the theatrical and goth mood that’s laced into these two songs and the undercurrent for the EP as a whole. Is it a little shallow? Sure. With three tracks hovering around a minute each, there isn’t time to settle into any one mood. But as a strange, flickering transmission from wherever UMO’s headed next, Curses makes its mark. Brief, bleak, and weirdly fun.

order Curse by Unknown Mortal Orchestra HERE