Good things come to those who wait, they say. As per my own experience, it’s at times likely the one waiting will die of old age prior to these good things showing up, but luckily that’s not always the case. While waiting as such isn’t really the virtue it’s made out to be, there can be great reward to it, which stems mainly from anticipation and the ensuing fulfillment, and today’s premiere is about both of those things. I first saw the band live three years ago almost to the date and was blown to smithereens, enough so that I had them over as a Weekly Featured Artist, and already back then, the promise of an album was floated over. So I’ve been waiting in somewhat of a stasis for that day to come, and it’s finally upon us.
Sunniva is a Finnish post-metal/sludge/doom quartet, whose first full-length Hypostasis is arriving on September 19, aka tomorrow, via Svart Records, to a great degree of anticipation. Having been active for almost a decade and with a few belters of EPs preceding the new record, Sunniva has honed their craft to its most pristine form yet to provide both a cathartic yet an unrelentingly suffocating experience to anyone taking the dive to their world. You don’t have to take my word of it alone, as you can just hit play from below and follow through for my told-you-so;
Well, I told you so.
“Mercurial Bloodstreams” begins Sunniva‘s pummeling operation right out the gate, wasting no time in exploding to the listener’s face with full force. The atmosphere introduced on the opener applies throughout the entirety of Hypostasis, with its emphasis shifting where necessary to provide for a captivating and tonally rich listen that gives you more than it takes. “Peine Forte Et Dure” continues on a similar path but with a slightly more ponderous attitude, conjuring up those sweet fuzzed out moments of meditation before evolving to a wall of sound of leviathan proportions. Balancing between these two extremes is something that Sunniva clearly enjoys doing and conveniently also excel at, and I’m all for it. The third track “Valovaltimo” (finnish for “Light Artery”) features a long time live collaborator Lotta from Svarta Havet on vocals and Markus from Callisto on cigar box guitar amongst other things, and with its acute riffs and monolithic hooks, exists somewhere in the middle of the two previous songs yet opens up the gateways for further aural exploration to surge forth.
‘The phrase ‘RAW SONIC POWER fuelled by life’s low frequencies‘ works well to describe the overall feeling. The album’s concept goes into themes of isolation, the ever churning machine of technology and its impact on us, the general atmosphere and feeling of regression in people’s empathy, the climate changing and its impact on a spiritual level within us as humans and the self realization that the thing holding us back from really doing something about any of this is our own ego. We wanted to create an album which showcases our diverse melding of different feelings and soundscapes into songs and making the whole album feel almost cinematic with twists and turns along the way. One of our friends summed up the songs quite well: ‘It feels the same as when you watch a good HBO series, packed with drama and it keeps you guessing as to where the story takes you next.‘
‘The album title translates to an underlying reality or substance, as opposed to attributes or to that which lacks substance. Also in literature it means when a character in fiction becomes aware that they are in a fictional world. It also means in medical terms the second stage of death when blood settles in the lower limbs. The fact that the title can be interpreted in many ways works well in describing the album as a whole, keeping the work open to interpretation.‘
The mentioned soundscape aspects alongside the rather poignant themes elaborated on above become perhaps the most palpable on the songs “Opening the Key” and “Sun Funeral”, which together form the definitive highlight of Hypostasis, at least for me. With the added depth provided by additional instrumentation and personnel, the tortuous compositions and simply magnificent production clash to an outcome of the caliber very rarely heard in this particular musical nook. Time and time again, I couldn’t help but to close my eyes to let the tide take me away from this corporeal world into a dimension unspoken of, with the nervous system of the cover figure stretching around me as a map with such uncanny sights to show me. Here’s probably a good spot to also underline the un-fucking-believable artwork created by the group’s vocalist/guitarist Oliver Webb;
“Hung from the Sky” carries the album to its close with an adequate and noble manner, a constant sense of end hovering on top of the weaving and folding monolith. With the appropriate harsh but beautiful drone/ambient bit at the end, it’s as if Sunniva subtly prepared you to just embrace silence after they’ve done what they came here to do. And that silence, however abrupt and unwanted, arrives with a sense of serene calm, soul-clenching completion, and a pledge of long-lost hope.
It is strange, that hope, to be honest. We live in a world where hope is a commodity not automatically afforded by many, and most of those who are able to enjoy it, are most likely the reason it’s so scarce to begin with. I’ve grown accustomed to endless preaching of death and devastation either through words or music, and every now and again, someone like Sunniva comes through the opaque veil of shit to remind me that even annihilation has its perks, and that there is room for something more even amidst all of the wreckage surrounding us.
Hypostasis is officially out tomorrow, and in addition to following Sunniva on Facebook and Instagram, you should grab the album as well as make yourself acquainted with the band’s past endeavours over at their Bandcamp. For all of my physical media aficionados out there, vinyl and CDs are available through Svart‘s shop.
Photos by Alex Talve
