If the aughts were the decade of the drone musically, in every other respect it was the decade of doom. Wars, rumours of wars, environmental degradation and economic collapse all made for a pretty shitty decade. It's not entirely surprising given the state of the world that a band who played heavy as fuck glacial doom/drone metal would become one of the decade's most acclaimed artists. Of course it wasn't just because the band provided the soundtrack to our fear and trepidation that Sunn 0))) became so highly regarded, rather it was because the band expertly combined drone and doom, while relentlessly, and successfully experimenting with their basic primordial template. As a result the band has produced three of the decade's finest albums; "White 2," "Black One," and now "Monoliths and Dimensions."
The album begins with exactly what you expect from Sunn 0))), a singular monumental slab of doom guitar bliss that sounds like the cracking of the earth itself. About halfway through opener "Aghartha," purportedly about a lost underground city, the guitar gives way to Penderecki-like strings. If the guitar is the breaking of terra firma, the strings are the tearing of the roots buried deep within, as the band burrows further underground into the darkest bowls of the earth. The piece ends with jazz legend Julian Priester submerged deeper still and blowing drones out of a conch shell while black metal legend Attila Csihar recites his esoteric lyrics. "Aghartha" makes it clear that Sunn 0))) have a lot more on their mind than simply turning their guitars up past 11.
"Big Church" follows, not with pummeling guitar, but a Viennese woman's choir, eventually the crushing guitar does come in, but the women's choir maintains the upper hand. Throughout the piece, Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson's legendary guitar drones engage in a sort of point counterpoint with the choir that is occasionally punctuated by Csihar's mantra like chanting. Mind you this is no metal meets orchestra tripe. This isn't Metallica backed up by a symphony, or even anything resembling symphonic metal, this is something more akin to modern composition. It is art, but art that you can raise your devil horns to.
"Hunting and Gathering" crushes. And by crushes, I mean it crushes everything in sight, and everything that has ever been recorded by anyone ever, anywhere. Others have called "Hunting" the heaviest song ever. Maybe, if you discount Sunn 0)))'s other recordings. To avoid that argument, let's just say that Sunn 0))) is the heaviest band ever, and this is certainly one of their heaviest pieces. "Hunting" sounds like a war party stomping across the land on their way to victory. This time the band's bread and butter guitars take center stage alongside Csihar. Only occasionally does the song give way to horns, percussion and regular collaborator Oren Ambarchi's electronics.
And then there is "Alice." "Alice" is Sunn 0)))'s fitting tribute to jazz legend Alice Coltrane. The piece finds the band tapping into the same spiritual transcendence that Coltrane's music delivered. Beginning with ominous earth-bound (the band and the planet) guitar , as "Alice" progresses it crawls its way toward the heavens. Priester pushes the song further outward and upward into the universe before stealing it completely from the black robed guitar gods. The song ends with slight harps, denoting Coltrane's instrument of choice, and Priester's legendary horn echoing out through the cosmos. It is an incredibly beautiful end to any album, much less an album by the premiere doom metal band.
I have always argued that doom metal has a transcendental quality about it. "Monoliths and Dimensions" is a prime example of that transcendental experience, taking the listener from the center of the earth to the outer reaches of space. Given that Sunn 0))) has continually confounded and expanded expectations over the past decade, one can only assume that the 10s will be just as rewarding, especially if "Monoliths and Dimensions" is any indication.
0 comments:
Post a Comment