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Sunn O))) - Kannon

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    Ian Jane
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  • Sunn O))) - Kannon



    Sunn O))) - Kannon
    Released by: Southern Lord
    Released on: December4th, 2015.
    Purchase From Amazon

    The latest studio album from Sunn 0))) (made up of Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson), Kannon, is comprised of three tracks simply titled Kannon I, II and III. Like much of their earlier work, this latest offering (out on Southern Lord) is, as you'd expect if you're at all familiar with them, a heavy and at times transcendental affair. Clearly influenced by Buddhist philosophy (Kannon is the Goddess Of Mercy or a way to empathize with the suffering of the universe - and you can read all about that here), the three tracks focus not on typical metal traits like speedy riffs or staccato heavy bass lines but instead on tone and atmosphere.

    As the album begins, the music is almost instantly immersive. It washes over you and rather than get your fist pumping like a more traditional opening track on a more traditional metal band's latest record might, it almost buries you. O'Malley and Anderson play with waves of feedback, they create a veritable symphony of noise, of droning ambient sounds that stick in your craw. Much of this stems from the repetition that serves as the building blocks of the song and much of that repetition comes from the slow, almost numb, bass playing. Overtop of this we get periodic vocal injections from Hungarian black metal/Mayhem alumni Attila Csihar that are eerily off kilter and somehow simultaneously appropriate.



    The first track segues almost flawlessly into the second number with Csihar's vocals more pronounced and delivered with a more deliberate, almost staccato, chanting style. It fits in perfectly, as most of Csihar's work with Sunn O))) tends to, with the band's more spiritually inflected soundscapes. This, not shockingly at all, turns into the third track but really this is all just one giant thirty-five minute piece and that's how you should listen to it. Unless you're playing it on vinyl and need to get up to flip the record over each of the three compositions on the recording are really a part of the whole. There's a distinct tone to all of this that starts with Kannon I, continues through Kannon II and hits a crescendo of sorts in Kannon III (an earlier version of which was on the Dí¸mkirke like album) where the guitars build into a literal frenzy and Csihar's vocals turn from a chant into a series of howls and screams. The feedback that's such a big part of the band's sonic creations becomes more intense, less a part of the music than, periodically, the entirety of it.

    It's dark and beautiful in its own way. It's raw and sort of loose but not at all unpolished. It's experimental and noisy but somehow refined at the same time. The band based this album off of what they'd been doing live in recent years, it has a power behind it that makes it differ from other studio records they've put out (this is their first studio release in six years) and it is, in a lot of ways, a stripped down version of past efforts. Having said that, it fills you. You listen to this music in the right frame of mind and under the right circumstances and you are satiated, even overwhelmed. The band don't paint in strictly black these days, their palate has become more varied, but at the same time this still sounds like you want a Sunn 0))) album to sound. Go into this with an open mind, let it surround you and do its thing. Kannon is as impressive as it is surprisingly diverse and moving.


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