Ever wonder what Black Sabbath would sound like if Ozzy and Bill Wardwere shot and killed, leaving a bereaved Tony Iommi and Geezer Butlerto play a slow dirge at their funeral while under the influence ofhorse tranquilizers? What if that sound were then passed through thedepths of hell and slowed down to last the entire day? The sound mightbegin to approximate the slow, doom-laden heaviness of Sunn O))), apair of doped-up metalheads from the Deep South. Sunn O)))'s musick isevil, neolithic metal sludge that was born out of Satan's ass. GregAnderson and Stephen O'Malley's strategy is simple: reduce heavy metalto its primal elements—guitar and bass, played slow and thick, like abarrel of syrupy magma being poured into a hole full of preschoolers.Nobody can actually play guitar this painfully slow, so Anderson andO'Malley make use of a variety of tape effects to achieve the properslow burn. Their two performances at the recent Autechre-curated AllTomorrow's Parties festival in England were certainly some of thehighlights of the event. Sunn O))) performed in Grimm robes, in frontof a huge stack of ultraloud speakers, flanked on the left and right bylive tape editors, and augmented by guest vocalists. For their firstperformance, the legendary Julian Cope joined Anderson and O'Malley toperform spoken-word poetry over the loud drones. For Sunn O)))'s secondshow, Odinist Runhild Gammelsaeter joined the proceedings, sportingsome bizarre Kiss-meets-Wotan face make-up. Runhild performed a seriesof vocal growls and ululations that focused the magickal energy of thebass and guitar rumbles and shot it out into the crowd. Sunn O)))'s newalbum title, White1, appears to be a nod to their last album Flight ofthe Behemoth, which had a completely black cover, and featured novocals and no guest appearances other than a remix collaboration withMerzbow. For this outing, Sunn O))) attempt to approximate their liveshows, with three long tracks featuring the same guest stars thatfrequently join them live. The first track, "My Wall," features SunnO)))'s trademark slow motion feedback riffs in the background, while inthe foreground Julian Cope does a terrific spoken-word bit that is bothingenius and hilarious—a long-form Odinist verse that mythologizes andcelebrates Anderson and O'Malley's transcendent wall of guitar drones.The painted up magician Runhild Gammelsaeter guests on the second track"The Gates of Ballard," a 15-minute fuzzy invocation of the sun thatgoes straight for your cerebral cortex with its mindbending drones.Amazingly, this song actually features drums, a true rarity in the SunnO))) canon. The third track, ominously entitled "A Shaving of the HornThat Speared You" is the most ambient track on the album, featuringmenacing distorted bass rumbles and randomly strummed electric guitar,together with ritualistic vocal intonations that seem to impregnateyour mind with dark thoughts. White1is Sunn O)))'s breakthrough record, effortlessly merging the minimaldroning of their early work with a host of like-minded collaborators,who push and expand their sound into their most tantalizinglyapocalyptic album yet. - Read More
