Review: SUNN O))) ‘SUNN O)))’

It was a pleasant surprise to see drone doom icons SUNN O))) return to their grim, hypnotic roots on Eternity’s Pillars B/W Raise The Chalice & Reverentiallate last year, so the idea of a brand new self-titled album this soon afterwards is even more appealing.

Recorded in Bear Creek Studios, Washington State, the forests outside the studio would provide ample inspiration for the Anderson and O’Malley duo to create SUNN O))), a continuation of their journey back to their primordial drone/doom roots.

For a band this far into a venerable career to release a self-titled album generally means one of two things: a re-establishment of identity or a completely defining record good enough to be eponymous. Well, which one will this be? It is out now through Sub Pop Records.

The squalling, undulating feedback that opens XXANN feels like a warm embrace from an old friend, but held so long that it makes you uncomfortable. SUNN O))) have always done their best work at that precipice of pleasant submergence and drowning, layers of droning fuzz that envelop and threaten your safety. When that initial drone riff crashes through, it feels like a seismic event, rattling your teeth in droning, vibrating waves.

Each of their releases has felt cathartic in their own way, but this album threatens the very limits of oppression in a way I haven’t really felt since Black One. But in this dark and droning morasses, you will find the moments that betray this arboreal recording process; a trace of running water in XXANN, the field recordings at the beginning and end of the dense, viscous drones of Mindrolling; these fleeting glimpses of a natural world so close to this undulating darkness are moments of hope in an otherwise suffocating, cloying miasma of squalling feedback and bone shaking distortion.

a seismic event, rattling your teeth in droning, vibrating waves…

Black metal pioneers get a nod in Does Anyone Hear Like Venom?,in what could also be a nod to their Immortal cover on Black One; a complete deconstruction of that style into its base elements, but retaining every part of the darkness. Over almost eighty minutes, you are treated to a full body immersion into the hypnotic, unsettling serenity of SUNN O))), closing with the touches of piano on Glory Black that is an utterly unsettling coda.

I’ve never had the chance to see the band live, but I’ve heard tales that people lie on the floor to get the full force of that droning rumble. Well, SUNN O))) is an album that would suit that perfectly, because it feels like a primal experience in sound and vibration. Everything is huge and vast, it makes you feel small and almost pointless, like a grain of sand tossed around during an earthquake.

This is a gorgeous yet hideous experience of lustful horror, of sensuous terror, of endlessness, and it leaves you enthralled in its wake. SUNN O))) are back with a vengeance, and this is an album they needed to make.

Label: Sub Pop Records
Band Links: Official | Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Scribed by: Sandy Williamson