Sunn0)))

Monoliths & Dimensions

Southern Lord 2009

What can really be said about the American lords of Drone that hasn't already been said?  Their new, hour long album of monotonous reverb infested doom is exactly what what one would expect from Sunn0))).  So if you are familiar with them you either love their style or are bored to tears by it.  I am in the middle somewhere though I lean towards being somewhat unmoved.  Aghartha opens the album with massive walls of deafening guitar that surge and fade like nebular pulses from deep space.  Attila Csihar's vocals are intentionally lifeless and hit hard while they attempt to impart the wisdom of dead gods.  There are ominous piano hits that add to the overall sense of dread within the cavernous walls of the track.  The slow dragging of the pick up and down the strings can be both grating and unsettling.  Up next is Big Church with its angelic choir vocals that are a quit portent of the thick, vibrating mountains of guitars that rise like Atlantis from an ambient sea.  The Deep vocal chants and continued angel choir vocals imbue a spiritual mindset to the track while the guitars sound as if they were recorded in a cathedral as they vibrated off the walls and ascended into the high gothic arches of the ceiling.  The reverb and vocal layers are so dense and suffocating towards the songs climax.  Hunting & Gathering (Cydonia) brings the album to its most coherent incarnation.  Repetitive, throbbing riffs rumble like a slow motion jackhammer against deathly vocals.  Noble horn sections add touches of majesty to the sinister vibe created by those dirty pulsing riffs.  The 16 minute instrumental Alice brings proceedings to their ultimate conclusion.  Sparse, echoing strums dance slowly against quickly building horns that mimic rays of passing sunshine.  It is along the lines of a stripped-down, less interesting Earth.  Monoliths & Dimensions is unnerving as intended and is extremely methodical and calculated.  It provides sort of a musical arc from the ominous and dense early material to the uplifting and somewhat whimsical horn musings of Alice.  I have to be in the EXACT right frame of mind in order to appreciate what Sunn0))) is doing otherwise I find their compositions tedious and quickly lose interest.