Friday Full-Length: Sunnata, Climbing the Colossus
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 17th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
It’s been about a decade since the Warsaw-based heavy rockers Satellite Beaver revamped their name and the concept of their band to become Sunnata, having made their full-length debut with 2009’s Trip Outside Your Mind (review here) and followed it with the 2012 EP, The Last Bow (review here). And if the kind of ritual metal, heavy psych and meditative spirit of Sunnata‘s work was the vision they were chasing all along, unquestionably that moniker swap was the right choice — it was on a few levels, actually. With the continued lineup of guitarist/vocalist Szymon “SZY” Ewertowski, guitarist Adrian “GAD” Gadomski, bassist Michał “DOB” Dobrzański and drummer Robert “ROB” Ruszczyk, the aesthetic turn was made manifest when Sunnata released Climbing the Colossus in March 2014. Here’s what the band had to say about the change at the time:
“Many things have changed since our start in 2008. After three short-length releases and numerous shows we all (finally) agreed to make a step closer to become premium pop-stars. However, the new band name doesn’t imply any lineup or makeup changes. It simply suits our approach to the music, which has become way heavier and trippy in comparison to what we played back in 2008. So here it is. SUNNATA is a soundscape, where noise crossfades clearness – where walls of fuzz, delay and reverb confront the monolith of absolute silence.”
As it turns out, they’d be confronting all kinds of monoliths as Sunnata, be it loud, quiet, in between or existential, and the “heavier and trippy” direction manifests clearheaded in Climbing the Colossus‘ 49-minute run across as series of short-growing-longer tracks the trail through which is marked by a series of aurally diverse interludes, be it the 40-second “I” which opens the record and leads into the horror-slash intensity of the guitar and the massive roll that typifies “Orcan,” repetition becoming ritual, the eight-second echo wisp “II” that swirls into the start of the subsequent “Asteroid,” a fuzzed but sharply executed thrust finding its apex after a series of start-stops in its second half, the shortest of the ‘song-songs’ at 3:39, or the almost-a-minute churn-noise and feedback of “V” that closes the record following the nine-minute “Fomalhaut,” which crescendos the aggression on display throughout Climbing the Colossus without letting go of the atmosphere that’s so much a part of the album’s overarching impression.
On a straight-through listen, as opposed to, say, hearing it on vinyl, the atmospherics become part of the songs. They are transitional intros/outros that flow from one piece to another, not in between every track, but something to move the listener along with the material so that the crushing low-end that rises to such unsullied crush in “Seven” after the end of “Asteroid” — a rolling movement that becomes elephantine as the song, which runs an appropriate 7:07, shifts into its back half, becoming likewise psychedelic and monstrous and massive; a watershed moment — gives over to the jingling and drone of “III” smoothly and with purpose, adding character to tracks that don’t necessarily want for it but that are richer for its being there. A key stretch arrives on what for the LP is the beginning of side B, with “Path” (7:48), “Stalagmites” (7:09) and “Monolith” (6:38) in a row.
There’s a pattern, you see: Interlude, one song, interlude, two songs, interlude, three songs, interlude, song, interlude (and if you want to replace the first and last “interlude” there with “intro” and “outro” I won’t stop you; I use “interlude” to show the consistency of purpose in deepening the ambience), and the intention even nine years after the fact still feels like Sunnata are pulling you deeper into this world as they go. Thus “Path” into “Stalagmites” and “Monolith,” even though each one gets subsequently shorter, is the stretch in which the listener is most immersed. “Path” has a hook and is as aggro in its vocals and chugging low end as it is spacious in the guitar later on — a kind of cosmic metal that in hindsight is very much Sunnata‘s own — and crashes to a stop for a few seconds of that “absolute silence” before “Stalagmites” begins to stir with a few nudges of echoing guitar before the proggy bassline starts that probably could’ve been their own interlude.
Nonetheless, once “Stalagmites” (which come up from the ground; ‘stalactites hold on tight, stalagmites might poke you in the butt’) kicks in from its buildup, it maintains its weight for the duration, and though “Monolith” has a quieter break as part of its procession, the muted stops in the second half are an early example of the band making the studio an instrument — ‘studio’ being a relative term since the drums were done at Demontazownia Studio while guitar, vocals and presumably bass were handled via home recording, ‘edited’ by Dobrzański while Jan Galbas had the difficult task of mixing and mastering to find balance amidst the purposefully conjured chaos — and pummeling in their own right, another call out to the metal of the mid-to-late ’90s. A moment to process in “IV” and then “Fomalhaut” feedbacks into immediate destruction. It is a summary as much conceptual as practical, sound-wise, has a mellow bridge and a languid lead that’s almost stoner rock as it moves to the halfway point, but makes that jangly chug transcend and become something bigger, a march that gets topped with a clean, low-register verse like cosmic spiritual swagger, growing more feverish as it goes before a resolute twist finishes, some residual feedback smoothing the way into the postscript grey psychedelia of “V,” which fades quickly on its way out.
It’s not just that Sunnata pulled off an aesthetic turn with Climbing the Colossus. They did, to be sure. But this record also set in motion a stylistic growth that continues to this day, with the same lineup behind it. That they’ve together undertaken the journey from Climbing the Colossus to 2016’s Zorya (review here), 2018’s Outlands (review here) and 2021’s Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth (review here) isn’t to be understated, as they’ve managed to consistently move forward with a sense of progression while reveling in the enduring atmospheric elements of their approach. In the varied realms of Polish heavy, they’re part of a generation of players emergent over the last decade who stand astride the 2020s as still-evolving veterans, and even as one looks back at the beginning steps of that process here, robes and harem pants and all, it’s almost impossible not to look forward to what they might do next.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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5:19AM at present. I woke up this morning at about 2:30, spent the next hour-plus tossing and turning, drifting to sleep and waking up again about every 20 minutes, until at 3:40 I gave up and decided I was just awake and that was it. That’s been a fairly steady pattern the last couple weeks. Yesterday, I think it was, I made it until the alarm went off at 4, and I felt like I had slept late.
So anyway, coffee.
Okay. Last weekend was The Patient Mrs.’ birthday. Happy birthday. All was good. We had my family over for dinner Saturday, and Sunday went to brunch in Brooklyn with friends of hers (who have three kids) who live there. After that, because The Pecan said it was his only goal for this year to see a dragon dance (he is a special kind of kid), we went to the Chinese New Year parade. It was overwhelming on the whole, but I was glad there wasn’t a mass shooting, which pretty much anytime you put humans in a place together these days in America becomes a concern; I’m standing there with the kid on my shoulders (he’s getting big for that), scanning the crowd for people who look like me except particularly distraught. Glad to see there weren’t any and nobody got killed. Mark it a win.
Except for the fact that The Patient Mrs. starting on Tuesday was violently ill. Not covid, she tested, but a stomach thing she and the friends’ kids seemed to share. Neither The Pecan nor I picked it up, which feels like a great, great victory, having seen her go through Tuesday and Wednesday, especially, without being able to eat or even really drink water without unfortunate consequences, but she was miserable and mostly in bed for that time, so probably not the post-birthday week she was hoping to have. I don’t understand how anyone who lives in a human body can believe it was made in the image of an almighty deity. Yeah, I hear god also projectile vomits when he eats some funky strawberries. Totally legit.
She seems like she’s on the other end of it now — or at least she managed to hold onto the white rice and scrambled egg she ate for dinner last night — but that kind of defined the week. The Pecan, meanwhile, had his first and second Tae Kwon Do classes with other kids. He likes it, seems to like it a lot, but is sort of transient by nature so we’ll see if he wants to stick with it after a couple more lessons. He likes things that are new, tires eventually and moves onto the next thing.
When I was a kid, the messaging that went along with that was that you needed to dedicate yourself to something, to “stick with it.” Having already seen him ice skate, play soccer, do tee-ball, track and field — he’s five, remember — I don’t necessarily believe he needs to “stick with” something that’s going to make him unhappy and think that his time might be better spent exploring new things until he finds what fits. I stuck with a bunch of shit in my time, including Tae Kwon Do, well past the point where I was enjoying any of it, and all I feel like I got for that was an obsessive personality and a constant feeling of failure. So yeah, when and if he’s ready to move on, that’s fine.
I need to remind myself of this because at this point it’s my nature to dig into a thing entirely regardless of enduring pleasure or displeasure. You might say it’s how and why The Obelisk exists and persists. Part of it, anyway. I consider myself fortunate that when I put on a record like the new Sandrider or REZN, or an older one like the Sunnata above, that I can still enjoy hearing it. Music has been the most consistent source of joy in my life. Worth waking up for.
This weekend, more family time. I was thinking of inviting my mother and sister and that crew for dinner tomorrow, but we might actually just mellow it out — can it be both? not entirely sure — and take a break for a day since on Sunday into the holiday Monday, The Patient Mrs.’ sister, her own two kids and two dogs are coming to stay, having not been able to make the trip down from Connecticut for her actual birthday. So you see how those afternoon hours on Saturday, which surely will drag without some ‘event’ scheduled, might be a bit of restorative boredom worth undertaking.
Whatever you’re up to, I hope it’s great and that you enjoy. Today at 5PM is a new ‘The Obelisk Show’ on Gimme Metal. Please listen. The music’s good and the support is appreciated. Plus it’s free on their app or site: http://gimmemetal.com
5:54 now and The Pecan just opened his door, which means it’s the start of the morning shift. It’ll be Sesame Street in no time. I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head, hydrate all that stuff. Next week is jammed front to back — premieres for Slumbering Sun, Dead Shrine, an Enslaved review, etc. — so that’ll all start to unfurl on Monday. Hope to see you then, and thanks for reading, as always.
FRM.
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