Drone metal veterans Sunn O))) strip down to the core of their sound and produce the most dense sounding album of their long career on their self-titled Sub Pop debut.
Release date: March 3, 2026 | Sub Pop | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp
There is a truth that is drying up in our collective consciousness, and it has been evaporating for a while. People are too hasty, too impatient, and our attention is suffering constantly. We crave instant satisfaction, constant reassurance, and the conveniences of technology and progress. The truth is that we are forgetting how to slow down. We are forgetting strife, resistance, effort, and the way time and life move around us. We could blame AI, social media, modern technology at large, but this problem is older than that. It likely can be traced to industrialization, and for each facet of our lives that convenience has eroded, we have begun to forget how these inconveniences that we have collectively overcome are paid with the price of alienating selfishness, paid with deskilling ourselves, and paid with the abandonment of physical, emotional, and intellectual rigor that can not only strengthen ourselves individually, but can allow us to commiserate and recognize shared struggles in our neighbors and loved ones.
In the last seventeen years, for me, there has been one band that functions as a kind of sonic reset, or at least reminder, against the increasingly frantic and calamitous drums of progress: Sunn O))). The duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson are approaching thirty years as Sunn O))), but my introduction to them was 2009’s Monoliths & Dimensions. Their brand of drone, doom, and experimental metal opened my eyes to worlds of music I have never considered, and the band quickly became one of my favorites. Over the years I have explored all of their studio albums and some of their live releases, and from their humble beginnings of pushing waves of guitar and distortion through walls of their namesake amplifiers on Grimmrobe Demos, the duo grew into a massive collaborative force, working with Attila Csihar of Mayhem fame, Japanese drone/doom/rock/shoegaze legends Boris and noise maestro Merzbow, as well as Ulver and Scott Walker, and many others. I have referred to them as underground metal’s Grateful Dead due to their large number of live recordings and excellent merch, but more significantly, Sunn O))) carries the same sort of spiritual and communal heft as The Dead does for their fans. I’m not a Dead head, but this seems true to me, at least.
The reason for all of this veneration stems from the very nature of Sunn O)))‘s music. It isn’t for casual listening. You can’t throw drone metal on at a bar and expect anyone to be into it. You can’t shuffle it into a playlist or let it linger in the background while you’re driving or doing chores and get the full effect. Sunn O))) demands good and loud speakers or headphones and the willingness to slow the fuck down and take in massive amounts of sound while in a flow state. Get stoned. Meditate. Fix your vision on a Rothko, or just close your eyes. The sound will do the work. After all of their collaborations and extravagant live performances, Sunn O))) has stripped away everything but the core duo and unveiled to the world their 10th studio album, appropriately self-titled. Rather than releasing it on Anderson’s Southern Lord or O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ labels, sunn o))) marks the duo’s first album for alternative and indie label supreme Sub Pop.
After 2019’s Life Metal and its companion piece Pyroclasts, both of which seemed like the ‘lighter’ side of Sunn O))), this new album is both a return to form and a new chapter in heaviness. The album was recorded in a remote cabin studio with engineer Brad Wood who touts that each song has 130 or more guitar tracks each, with mics recording each speaker in each amplifier. This meticulous process gives the album a level of density that surpasses all of their previous albums, which is an insane feat, considering the already dense layers of amplifiers and guitars and whatever else has been thrown in over the band’s catalogue so far. The only other difference here is the use of some field recordings sprinkled throughout the album, a flowing stream and some birds chirping. There is some synthesizer and piano thrown into the final track, “Glory Black”, as well, but besides these few embellishments, this album is almost purely dense guitar drone for 80 minutes.
So, forgive me for not running a track-by-track analysis or scouring over the album to find the exact moments of those little flourishes or attempting to analyze the glacially slow riffs as they unfold. Those things are great additions and add some variety to the listening experience, but the bulk of this record is what lies between the strums and atmospheric detours. This is an album of pure sonic density, where the movement happens in soundwaves pushing amplifiers to their limits exposing an endless uncovering of microtones, the crackles and pops of stressed speaker heads, and the ways those sounds impact the mind and body. Sunn O))), for all of their slowness, are easily the most visceral band I can think of. Each track shudders and pulses, enveloping the listener in tectonic rumblings that can shake a person to their core. As you listen, you cannot help but focus on those little unnerving details amidst the overwhelming volume. For all of its length, sunn o))) moves remarkably fast, like that trickling stream that lingers in the background. These aren’t whitewater rapids on a river, but the flow is persistent, calming, and mesmerizing.
Sunn O))) has given us exactly what more of us need right now, a long moment to slow down and ponder, to relax under their weighted blanket of sound. They may have shed some of their more experimental leanings and penchant for collaboration, but at their core, they have always been architects of gargantuan riffs that move with the speed of eons. Their patience and attention to detail requires the same of the listener, invoking a ritualistic aura of transcendent distortion, mollifying modernity’s maleficence to our mental health by coaxing our brain waves in concert with their sound waves until they become harmonic. The impact of the remote recording in the woods of the Pacific Northwest may seem idyllic for a folk record, but this is abrasive, slow, and intentional music that has the power to heal rather than amuse. May we all bask in the Sunn O))).
Header image courtesy of Charles Peterson
