Sunn O))) Sub Pop

Sunn O))): Sunn O)))

Sub Pop Records

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Album Of The Week!

Drone Metal titans Sunn O))) release their tenth studio LP on Sub Pop. Stripped back to the duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley and backed up by a tour of the States and Europe, 2026 is a big year for the band. Sean Millard, Sunn O))) acolyte and your ever-lovin’, blue-eyed scribe, buckles in, submits to the drone and gets ready to ask just one pertinent question…

It’s frighteningly easy to fall into the trap of pretension with Sunn O))). To lean into the robes, the volume, the avant-garde fearlessness – of the listener, as much as the band – and assign inappropriately cerebral worth to their masterful sound. I do it myself. Constantly. It’s natural to seek meaning and presence in their abstraction. But it might be unnecessary.

I have read in promotional guff and articles (that regurgitate said guff) how this album is a return to pure Sunn O))). After several LPs that have included special guests, team-ups and other musicians to augment their sound, Sunn O))) sees the band paired back to the core duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O’ Malley. Live. Nude. In the raw. Doing what they do best. Fab news. Exciting.

But then the waffle explores increased meaning, when that initial headline is more than enough to define the LP. The guff conjures meaning, as if they’re actual wizards, whose mere utterances can cause planets to collide. It’s not necessary.

The less-than-dynamic duo recorded out in the forests of Washington State. Breaks were taken from the recordings to hike into the woods. Inspiration was found. Rain fell. To this, I say: Bollocks. You’ve just described every Norwegian Black Metal LP from the last 35 years. It’s not an original context. As much as I would normally embrace this wafty fiction, I am refusing to do it this time. I am not being swaddled by the fluff. Instead, I am asking just one, staggeringly simple question: Does It Doom?

I was first drawn to the immaculate atmosphere of Sunn O))) with White 1, in 2003. As much allured by the aesthetic as the challenge of the music. Sunn O))) have always married their own mysterious visage and superior graphic design with musical invention into the most enticing of and complete packages. On top of that, both members are intelligent, humble, adventurous  and articulate people, manifesting an adoration for METAL in the most defiantly heavy form it is possible to take. What’s not to adore? Does. It. Doom?

Well – spoiler alert – of course it does. In a catalogue of near-flawless, enigmatic, addictive and immortal drone, of COURSE it fucking Dooms. Amazingly. Gloriously. Inevitably and infinitely. Sunn O))) always Doom.

Almost. The one time they let the side down, it wasn’t even their fault. In 2014 they were recruited as Scott Walker’s backing band for the very hard going Soused. They lacked the control they were used to and Scott’s later-period vocals were… an acquired taste. One that I never actually managed to procure. If Soused had remained instrumental, it would have been a good LP. But it didn’t. And it is simply too challenging for me. But that was one misstep. It’s a personal one too, so fair dinkum. And it’s a Scott Walker LP, not a Sunn O))) album, so it doesn’t really count. And anyway; even that one Doomed, in its own way.

I have my favourites, of course. I find the band has the power to infuse my creativity like the finest sativa. Other bands, with more coherent tunes, can be too distracting. Sunn O))) offer a lift and a motivation without getting in your way. I can work with them.

ØØ Void, Monoliths & Dimensions, Life Metal and Pyroclasts tend to be my go-tos. Kannon, Black One and the quite staggering Metta Benevolence, all offer more than adequate back-up as and when required. Sunn O))) are the one band I choose to stream, for uninterrupted enormity. Of course I buy the LPs. Every one of them. Religiously. They’re up there with Swans and Darkthrone on my tier list of dedication. But I end up playing the band more digitally than on vinyl. It works better for them. More utilitarian. More meditative.

So; what of this new self-titled LP? Well. It’s out on Sub Pop. That feels like a full circle. Not only because the band was formed in Seattle, but also because Sub Pop released what is normally described as – if not the first, then certainly a pioneering – Drone Metal LP – in Earth 2, in 1993. Dylan Carlson of Earth named his band in tribute to Black Sabbath’s early moniker. Sunn named themselves as a way of tipping the nod to Earth’s celestial influence, as well as adding the O))) in tribute to the vintage speaker brand’s logo. It is all so wonderfully and cosmically aligned. Sub Pop seems like a natural home. Though why the band decided to shift from Southern Lord, Greg Anderson’s own consistently brilliant label, is anyone’s guess. Still – I’m never one to quibble with Sub Pop. It suits both parties.

Next, the artwork. Rothko. I had a genuine Sunn O)))-like experience in the Rothko Room of the Tate Modern, not long after it opened. I sat, alone in the room, surrounded by the enormity of the crimson canvases and felt a tranquil oppression overwhelm me. What was I saying earlier about pretension? Sorry – but it was a tangible and undeniably affecting experience. It was physical.

Since then, I’ve had that feeling twice in other circumstances; one is, obviously, listening to Sunn O))) – really loud on headphones (and, finally, live, soon – can’t wait). The other was in the Elephant House at Twycross Zoo. I’m serious. There was a silent weight in the air that I could entirely feel. It was heavy. Gentle. Suffocatingly, blissfully, reassuring. A welcome oppression. All three moments share a kinship in weight, sensation and catch-your-breath vulnerability.

I digress. The artwork, therefore, is perfect and totally appropriate. If anything sounds like a Rothko, it’s Sunn O))). They also have a snappy line in merch slogans that lean into The Doom and are equally relevant to their cause: “Praise Iommi”, “Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results” and my favourite: “Ever Breathe A Frequency?”. This last one is so entirely applicable for this LP, that it’s worth using it to frame our thoughts on the detail. Take a breath. Consume The Doom. We’re going in.

The album opens with XXANN. 17 minutes of squalling feedback and chords that hang for thirty seconds… I know, because I timed them. It is nothing short of immense. If there’s a soundtrack to The Void, this is it. It is what you hear as you drift alone and eternally, through galaxies, as particles of cosmic dust. It is the taste of infinity. Close your eyes and breathe the tone. Your lungs suffocate in the vast tide of sound. It’s unlike anything else I’m aware of. Apart from Rothko and Elephants.

Oddly and intensely musical; this isn’t noise or spurious, malformed drone. It’s a finely crafted, deeply considered exercise in resonance. It envelops you in its fatal depth. Fucking wonderful, and the best way that I can think of you spending 17 minutes with your eyes closed and mind focused. You are snapped from you meditative dream-state with the piece’s abrupt ending; suddenly eyes wide, surprised and focus exploded.

The crackling bass rumbles of Does Anyone Hear Like Venom? extend the mammothian stride of XXANN after that snapped-off and abrupt silence. It’s all fade and decay; the sound of broken chords, literally 100 layers thick, intense as obsession, fragile as ego. Discordant string bends, sorrowful descents. A glacial pace. Tectonic plates shift at lightning speed compared to the chord changes. It’s a punchy number at 7.5 minutes. A veritable pop song.

The disrupting snap of silence is explored again in one of the album’s preview tracks, Butch’s Guns. The track defines immensity. Listen for yourself and draw your own conclusions. After all, what do I know? I’m just the messenger:

The epic Mindrolling begins with a sample of Pacific Northwest rain. It’s such a simple trick, but so damn evocative, your third eye instantly focuses elsewhere; a grim dark forest. Intense mist. Silhouettes of be-robed strangers. Piss wet through. It could be the hills above Bergen. Dammit. I’ve fallen for the guff. And it wasn’t necessary.

This one really does conjure the trees that are hammered so heavily in the guff and merch associated with this release. Succumb to the metaphysical transference. Witness our intrepid pair of Doom Mongers on a dawn trek through ferns and undergrowth, dwarfed by monolithic Sequoias, Firs and Maples. A stag silently watches from within the barcode of trees. The (ahem) barkcode.

The sun and moon shift in time-lapse; rapidly flickering above while you plod so slowly below. Everything juxtaposed. But everything in balance. Absorbing tone that feels like thick, custardy air. Blissfully drowned in sound, leaning on a staff as you march ever onwards into the deepening forest.

If, as Lord Byron said: “There is pleasure in the pathless woods…”. Sunn O))) have nailed it. It’s transformative. Where else do you have the room to wander? The absence of lyrics that dictate a vision, a drought of distracting melody… only tone to lose your mind in. I struggle to find the vocabulary that adequately covers the experience.

I’m listening to it at 4am. Birds are starting to sing outside my window. A grey day is dawning. My blurred, sleepy brain is particularly receptive to the drone; sat somewhere between dream and reality. A slumbering plane. To mingle with The Universe… Mindrolling is a fucking perfect eighteen minute Om. And By Fuck, It Dooms.

Everett Moses mixes things up with string scrapes and chords that change every four or five seconds. Punk. Rock. Coupled with the final track, the first preview song the ban released, Glory Black, the album ends on a punchy musical high.

I’m sort-of being sarcastic, but the comparative rapidity of the last pair of songs disrupts the reverie of the rest of the LP in the most appalling and enlightening way. Less meditative, more… I’m resisting the urge to say “groove”, but compared to the other tracks, the discernible riff of Glory Black, especially, is what passes for swing in Sunn’s world. It’s the closest the LP comes to a conventional tune, but don’t let that put you off. It’s hardly catchy. Add to it the sorrowful, lazily played single-notes of a lost piano, and the album ends on its most harmonious high. The song works so well as the climax of this self-titled journey, that listening to it in isolation feels too reductive.

Nevertheless:

I’m desperately trying to be a pro about the album and trying to find something negative or critical to say about it, to balance my nerdy adoration, but I’m failing. To my ears, this is a perfect album in a near-perfect catalogue of records. I think it’s their best work. It’s imaginative, immense, incredibly well produced, played and recorded. I’m sorry. I don’t feel like I’m doing my job properly, but Sunn O))) is completely fucking flawless.

Does It Doom? Like nothing else on Earth. And everything about it is totally bloody necessary, after all.

Catch them live on tour if you can… I’ll be at the back, quietly losing my mind to subsonic Armageddon. What a wonderful way to go.

~

Sunn O))) at Sub Pop

Sunn O))) at Southern Lord

Sunn O))) at Bandcamp

All words by Sean Millard. Read more at *Expletive Deleted