I guess sometimes you get told at the door the venue doesn’t allow outside photographers. My honest first thought: yeah but I’m here to shoot inside. Alas, idiot. Now you feel outré and not in a good way for lugging your backpack from New Jersey. Not that I walked or anything.

Last time I saw SunnO))) was at Psycho Las Vegas in 2018 (review here), and I’m willing to wager that if I didn’t tell you right now that’s where and when the photo above was from, you’d never know. Band makes a point to bury themselves in smoke at every gig. I was not necessarily heartbroken not to be able to take pictures, though like everyone else, I had my phone anyhow.

Solo drone cellist Leila Bordreuil opened in suitably noisy fashion. I knew nothing about her work going into her set, but could a appreciate a bit of sonic deconstruction or I wouldn’t have been at the show in the first place. My touchstone for cello experimentalism is Helen Money, and Bordreuil seemed less based in traditional composition than Allison Chesley or, say, Jo Quail, but the feedback and loops and crushing distortion grew more intense as she went on, so for sure there was a plan at work even if the opacity was part of it.

Frequency manipulation, willful aural fuckery, sounds alternately harsh and immersive, low hums and high squeals, the lights red, yellow, blue, red, Bordreuil admirably calm at the set’s most tempestuous. Maybe she went to college for it. Fucking a. She was followed by the ur-dude early-Metallica-riffs-plus-screamy-vocals of High Command, who are on Southern Lord. The crowd, half-artouse at least, dutifully raised its fucking horns when instructed to do so. Mask on in the circle pit. These are strange times. I can’t imagine a SunnO))) audience is easy to play to if you’re a metal band, let alone a young one, seething even at the stillest slow-Slayer parts, but credit where it’s due: they sold it well. The kind of stuff they play, they might need to do it for another 10-15 years before anyone realizes they’re awesome, but they seemed up to it.

Speed riffa, chain mic stand, came out with a sword, ’80s visor shades on the guitarist, good fun all. A new generation of metallers creating their future nostalgia. Come on, man, shit’ll never be like it was in the ’20s again. Those were the days. And so on. They weren’t ‘my thing’ at all, but I kind of had to love it anyway. And they’re from Worcester, Mass! They probably grew up in the shadow of the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival. Makes total sense. And they’ve got the right drummer. Fucking rad. Fucking metal.

SunnO))) — Greg “The Lord” Anderson (who also runs Southern Lord Recordings) amd Stephen O’Malley — billed this tour as the ‘Shoshin (初心) Duo,’ in reference to the fact that, where the band has expanded its lineup in various ways and incarnations over the last two decades, this is the thing in its barest form. So be it. Both Anderson and O’Malley were out to check their guitars and it was long enough before they went on that even standing in the back it was crowded enough to make me even less sad about not taking pictures, not that the ensuimg fart cloud was any great treat, but you know. I had wondered if maybe they wouldn’t play in the robes, raw form and all that, but indeed, the fog, the robes, the rumble, all of that.

For being essentially a rectangle box with a high ceiling and exposed brick from when the building was whatever it invariably was before it was this, the structural integrity of the venue stood up well to the assault of volume it received, and the undulating waveforms of guitar were by no means merciful. SunnO))) have been doom, black metal, white metal, death and life, dark neoclassical and more, and having never seen the core of thee project — the original best-stoned-band-idea ever — there was something of value to the experience. I imagined seeing it in 1998 and not getting it, or seeing it in 1999 amd maybe getting it. I remember seeing them in 2005 and worshiping it. This wasn’t that show or any of the others, and if it was a novelty that it was just the two of them, well, novelty has always been part of SunnO))), however otherwise branded they might be for a given record. Dudes, amps, robes, fog. You could feel it in the floor, in your chest. The venue was selling earplugs outside. They should’ve been giving them away.

I brought my own anyhow, stood in back and watched their shadows play slowly between the monolithic full stacks behind them. Tone henge. Fair enough. From there on in, it was all watch-the-smoke and endurance to see who could stand with them. People began to subconsciously or not step backward in front of me, pushed away by it, even as others stepped forward, and that’s what good art does. The lights brightened, dimmed, the air smelled like dry ice and gentrified beer burps. The amps did the singing in bleak chorus, and all was crushed as advertised. I thought suddenly, standing there, about a Tiffany show I’d been invited to that was probably happening at the same time, and what a big, weird planet this is.

Tell you what, I’d had a cold all week and SunnO))) were at least as effective a treatment for my sinuses as anything else I’d ingested, if harder on the ears. Folks started to get antsy about 40 minutes into the set, which is reasonable, and for a band whose entire concept is to be overwhelming, SunnO))) delivered on that particular promise even in this supposedly minimal manifestation. An hour would’ve been plenty, so they played for 90 minutes and gravity smooshed all our faces against unbreaking plexiglass while the riffs promulgated through the swirling fog. Breezy in that rectangle, but they got their point across for sure. I caught myself grinding my teeth. Lightning strobe and rising mist monsters. It was a grand sonic squashing.

Then, right at the end, just as the strobe headache was really settling in and they were feedbacking like they meant it, I found a dollar on the floor. Shit. A buck! Ultimate win. I may not have been allowed to use my fancy camera, but I rolled out of that show a richer man than I walked in. Not too shabby, all told.

Special thanks to Earle Connelly for the ticket and getting me out of the house, and thank you for reading.

Tags: Brooklyn, New York City, SunnO)))

This entry was posted on Monday, December 19th, 2022 at 10:19 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.