SUNN O))) – ‘SUNN O)))’ album review: Thunderous doom offers no new surprises
Seattle drone lords SUNN O))) are back with their eponymous tenth LP and first with their hometown label Sub Pop Records finally seeing the limits of where their gargantuan cosmic attack can reach.
The Skinny: Clocking nearly three decades in the black magic business, Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson have wielded an astonishing run of engulfing metal albums that plumb grippingly intense depths of arcane mysticism. Conjuring their smothering sheets of swallowing doom, SUNN O)))’s heavy sludge riffage rolls to such a mammoth expanse that their frequently ten-minute arcs nebulously draw in detours into dark ambient or even a weird, avant-garde classical.
Donning robes amid a foggy shroud for their lives shows, the SUNN O))) pair have cut one of the most original marks in the entire world of heavy metal or even alternative rock, truly possessing a serious vision of just where heavy music can reach with enough imagination. Ten albums in, can such new terrain still be excavated from their downtuned, heavy shroud?
Well, perhaps not. One patiently sits throughout SUNN O)))’s metal coven awaiting the phantasmal textures and sonic abstractions to begin to work their charm, slowly, incrementally, like a fever dream whisking you away to the mythic heart of the haunted wood as was achieved so brilliantly on Monoliths & Dimensions or Black One, but it just never quite happens. No aural profundity or stirring of the senses are truly gleaned amid the admirable efforts on the pair’s latest LP.
It might have something to do with its pared-down production process. Trekking to Washington’s Bear Creek Studios with co-producer Brad Wood, SUNN O))) decided to eschew outside collaborators, with just O’Malley and Anderson summoning their thunderous heft. However, Scott Walker’s baritone croon on Soused or Hildur Guðnadóttir’s electric cello on Life Metal imbued SUNN O)))’s spectral ether with an essential alchemy that afforded the records their unique characters.
Without new voices, SUNN O))) unfortunately feels like more of the same, yielding no sodden relics or weathered trinkets that begin to shine underneath the eerie mist as grounding prior LPs. It picks up, ‘Everett Moses’ unveiling a brief blast of industrial hiss that pulls the traverse in a new direction, and finale ‘Glory Black’ wanders as close as the album gets to the pair’s pupil-dilating gravitas with its piano splashes and slithering noise crescendo, but rather than evoking the metal majesty they’re capable of, SUNN O))) just nags with the frustrating feeling that we’ve been here before.
Standout Track: ‘Glory Black’
The Verdict: Going it alone for their tenth studio effort, SUNN O))) wield all the right abysall drone attacks and metal charge, but never transport to the heavy realms that proved so thrilling on previous LPs.
Release Date: April 3rd, 2026 | Producer: SUNN O))) and Brad Wood | Label: Sub Pop Records
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