Umber is the first full-length album by the American post-hardcore band Bitch Magnet. The band had added second guitarist David Galt since their previous year's release, the eight-song EPStar Booty. In 2004 Umber was listed in Mojo's "Lost Albums You Must Own".[1]
Music journalist Andrew Earles described the sound on Umber as "an aggressive and heavy approach to post-hardcore/indie rock that had alot[sic] in common with the aggro noise rock that dominated the Amphetamine Reptile and late-'80s Touch and Go rosters." However, Earles stated that Umber "lacked the unweildy, testosterone-fueled depravity and nihilism" of these albums, and that the album instead "[relies] on the hazy, often buried but melodic" vocals of Sooyoung Park.[2] Jason Ankeny of AllMusic described the album's third track "Clay" as a "taut exploration of extremist spatial dynamics." He described the album's fifth track "Douglas Leader" as a "quietly hypnotic minimalist ode 180-degrees removed from everything else in the Bitch Magnet oeuvre to date."[3]
Umber was first released in 1989 on LP by Glitterhouse Records with an all yellowish-umber colored cover with the band's name and album title set in a small bold font at its center. The record's 10 tracks were paired with the band's previous eight-song EP, Star Booty, and issued by Communion on cassette and CD that same year.
Jason Ankeny of AllMusic gave the album three and a half stars out of five.[3]
In 2011, Umber was remastered by Alan Douches and released in a box-set containing with the rest of the band's catalog.[6]
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