Album Review : Sunn O))) - Pyroclasts (2019)
The marriage between American drone metal juggernauts Sunn O))) and sound purist Steve Albini was self-evident and made pretty much everyone happy in 2019, with the release of their much anticipated eighth album Life Metal. Little did we know, Stephen O’Malley, Greg Anderson and Steve Albini got along so well, they recorded another album in their sessions. Somewhat of a dark, low profile companion piece to Life Metal called Pyroclasts.
It’s a more straightforward, minimalistic and subtly layered swirl into the primordial void than its predecessor.
The great thing about Sunn O)))’s music is that it has no inherent meaning to speak of. It’s an entirely subjective experience. The songs are improvised drone sessions that come into their own behind a mixing console. There are sonic differences between the four eleven minutes monoliths of Pyroclasts, but they’re not supposed to mean anything except what you want them to mean. That makes Sunn O))) difficult to review, but it explains why they’re so beloved.
They’re a sophisticated band you don’t need a PhD in music theory to appreciate. Now, you might need to give Pyroclasts a listen on its own AND then alongside Life Metal in order to grasp the breadth of what’s going on. They are thematically linked.
For example, he opener Frost (C) continues this journey into cosmic infinity Sunn O))) began on Life Metal, yet visits darker, more lifeless parts of your mind’s eye. Sounds esoteric when said like that, but the low rumbling guitars and the subtle shifts of the Moog synthetizer really create a paradigm where thoughts and nothingness collide. It’s a powerful and intimate experience that is enhanced by the purity of sound Steve Albini provides.
But like every Sunn O))) release, Pyroclasts requires patience. It slowly unravels through time, like a floating monolith too big for you to understand its scope at first sight. You have to let it unravel until the third song Ampliphædies to find the first major sonic clash, which takes the form of static glitches that interrupt the droning. In time and space, the listener becomes super aware of every detail and the experience is immediately altered. You’re somewhere else.
I’d say Pyroclasts functions more like two blocks of 22 minutes, more than four blocks of 11. It’s a long, wordless journey inside the infinite depths of your own mind. It’s a much more conventional Sunn O))) record than Life Metal is, but it does the things you love about their music right: it explores the tapestry of nuances a guitar can provide and challenges the very notion of how you receive and interpret music. It simply doesn’t get old.
Well, Sunn O))) did it. They band simultaneously subverted their audiences expectations with Life Metal and fulfilled them with Pyroclasts. Although the latter is not as much of a spectacularly disorienting as its predecessor, it’s hard not to like. Because it is played and recorded with the same feeling of pure experimentation that made Sunn O))) popular. Pyroclasts might not be groundbreaking, but it’s another exciting odyssey in the proverbial sonic darkness.
7.5/10
