SUNN O))) - ‘MONOLITHS AND DIMENSIONS’
An album destined to confound expectations...
Posted Thursday, 21 May 2009 in ,
Rating: 9
Celebrating a decade as
Sunn O))), with ‘Monoliths and Dimensions’
Stephen O’Malley and
Greg Anderson have traversed their gravest journey from darkness into light and delivered their most diverse and challenging album to date. Alongside regular live cohorts
Mayhem vocalist
Attila Csihar and guitarist
Oren Armbachi, the
Sunn O))) camp has been expanded to include classical arranger
Eyvind Kang, jazz trombonist
Steve Priester and
Earth’s
Dylan Carlson and
Steve Moore. The opening ‘Aghartha’, a nod to Seventies-era
Miles Davis, picks up where the gnarled metal of ‘Black One’ left off, with
Csihar gravely intoning over gargantuan churning guitars and skeletal strings. The mystical ‘Big Church’ is a big departure however, as the atonal shrieks of a Viennese women’s choir are cut asunder by a Morricone-esque bell before a tidal wave riff comes crashing back in amid a Kang arrangement that creaks eerily like a listing ship. The dense cyclical riffage of ‘Hunting & Gathering’ betrays the band’s most obvious debt to ‘Earth 2’ while the becalmed closer ‘Alice’s burbling woodwinds and brass bring the album to a beautiful, if highly unexpected close. An album destined to confound expectations, 'Monoliths...' is a supreme achievement that’s guaranteed to blow your mind along with your speakers.
Neil Gardner
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