The first few moments of Sunn O)))’s self-titled record play out in standard Sunn O))) fashion: crackling feedback, piercing frequencies, sustained resonance. Such is the lingua franca of the drone metal duo. But around the two-minute mark, the sound of faint, trickling water enters the mix, coursing through Stephen O’Malley’s and Greg Anderson’s chugging miasma like an unlikely river through scorched wasteland. Suddenly, it’s gone, yielding abruptly to the heavy mountains of guitars it once, somehow, coexisted with. Near the 17-minute mark, another improbable sound emerges from the muck: a twittering bird, peacefully chirping amidst the wreckage.
“XXANN,” the opening piece of the Seattle band’s first new album since 2019’s Pyroclasts, is an introduction critical to understanding Sunn O))) on a wider scale. Since their formation in 1998 and the nine albums that followed, O’Malley and Anderson have always invited outside collaborators to contribute to their insular, dense mountains of sound. Their 10th record and Sub Pop debut marks the first time the duo has created all the music themselves. Across these six instrumental compositions, they are the sole performers, a fact that feels particularly salient for an eponymous record. But they are not the only ones here; there are natural forces at play, and they fold into Sunn O)))’s orbit in ways that are both organic and surprising.
Throughout their career, the two musicians have interpreted black metal, dark ambient, and drone through their signature cacophony. Sunn O))) finds them throwing another ingredient into the mix: field recordings. Made at Bear Creek Studio in the appropriately named Woodinville, a deciduous enclave roughly 20 miles northeast of Seattle, the album feels like a joint project spearheaded by the band themselves and the surrounding nature in which they made it. O’Malley and Anderson would track these pieces while gazing out of the large windows that looked over the sprawling forest. Even when those field recordings aren’t easily discernible through all the distortion and volume, the outlying, verdant environment feels present on a subconscious, primal level, urging Sunn O))) to take the directions they do. It’s more of a guiding hand of instinct than an imposing, malevolent force.
“Mindrolling” begins with rushing water, a tranquil reminder of the setting encircling the pair as they conjure wave after wave of punishing noise. It’s this contrast between nature’s peaceful idyll and the musicians’ harmonic menace that makes Sunn O))) such an enrapturing experience. Those brief lapses, those small cracks in the facade of these arresting glaciers of guitar-wreaked havoc, bid you lean closer. As a band infamous for shows that vibrate the very buildings they perform in, their sense of dynamics is often underplayed. But Sunn O))) rectifies any misconceptions; each piece ebbs and flows with the ocean’s gravitational pull.
Those monstrous guitars on “Mindrolling” hold firm for nearly 18 minutes, but it’s during the final minute when they give way to the soothing sounds of water that introduced the track. It’s a subtle testament to nature’s enduring resilience, how it can sprout anew and withstand even the most brutal devastation. “Does Anyone Hear Like Venom?” is a sludgy nod to the Newcastle-bred black metal that looms large within Sunn O)))’s own oeuvre. Its viscous guitars ooze with the patience of magma, settling and crystallizing into heaps of volcanic ash. Closer “Glory Black” finds other contrasting conduits in addition to the band’s field recordings: A synthesizer rises like cream, its wispy tendrils floating faintly in the background, eventually ceding ground to a piano that hammers home its notes with a foreboding finality.
Sunn O))) is a distillation of their tactile drone metal as much as it is a tribute to nature’s beauty. As ugly and murky as it sounds at times, and as long as these stretches of tempestuous distortion elapse, there’s a reprieve that beckons you to listen closer. Is that the sound of a river? Are those birds happily singing in the distance? The clangor clears, and we’re left with a relic of the things that outlive us, the environs and habitats that resist manmade destruction. Like any astute ecologist, O’Malley and Anderson are here to document that strength. Just listen to what it can survive. [Sub Pop]
Grant Sharples is a writer, journalist and critic. His work has also appeared in Interview, Uproxx, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Ringer, NME, and other publications. He lives in Kansas City.
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