Black One

Sunn 0))), Sunn 0))) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 18, 2005)
• Original Release Date: 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Southern Lord
• ASIN: B000AP2ZAS
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,244 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #95 in Music > Dance & DJ > Ambient

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sunn Worship, October 27, 2005

By 

M. Maxwell "SkormFlinxingGlock" (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black One (Audio CD)

DISCLAIMER: This review may not be helpful in determining whether to purchase this particular Sunn album.

I saw Sunn live last night in Vancouver touring on this album and it was unlike anything I've ever seen.

Not so much a "rock" or even music show... the closest I could come to accurately describing it is "performance art" and even that's way off the mark. Last night my body did things at Sunn's behest I never knew it could. By far these guys are the LOUDEST live band I have ever seen... no idle statement. Instead of buying one of their albums, I decided to go see their show since I found out about it just weeks after discovering this band.

5 figures emerging cloaked in black, and the DROOOOOONE starts as those beautiful Sunn tube amps begin to hummmmmmmmmmmmm... Before you know it the first (possibly only) note of the show unfurls over the audience like a steamroller. It's like watching the Melvins (sans Dale Crover) at 1/4 speed, as one of the guitarists' hands arches up to the ceiling as a frame of reference for the rest of the band to keep the "beat" (as if 5 or 6 BPM constitutes a beat)... then comes crashing down in unison.

I kid you not, they played some notes last night that made it very difficult to breathe. Thankfully the tension was relieved 15 seconds or so later when the note changed and my chest was pounded slightly less intensely. One fun and interesting phenomenon I noticed was that whenever I exhaled my lips would vibrate against each other no matter how hard I tried to stop it.

It's not clear to me if the low-frequency chords or the sequence thereof signifies something esoteric, but one gets the sense that there is a method to what this band does. Picture the deafening sound of silence in the void of space, ever pulsing, stretching and dilating until it threatens to pull you apart... somehow it is as warm and soothing as it is visceral and frightening. This ain't your father's progressive metal.

I will say this: NEVER before have I seen members of the audience place their heads against the amps at a show. It was not an isolated incident either, at first I thought it was one joker with no regard for his own hearing, but then it happened again... and AGAIN. As loud as Sunn are, when it was all over and I walked out of the venue, there was no painful ringing in my ears, no shrill whine of damaged hearing. Kind of ironic that the band who put on the LOUDEST show of my life also barely registered on the permanent hearing damage scale.

Are they a real band or a promo/demo "act" for Sunn amps? It's hard to tell when your skull is shaking so violently. Two things are for sure:

1) I WILL see them again next time they roll through town.

2) I MUST have all their albums.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars YIKES! And the Award for Creepiest Album of 2004 goes to..., March 4, 2006

By 

Barry Dejasu "the_otherness" (Rehoboth, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black One (Audio CD)

This has to be one of the most singularly terrifying albums ever. Music is supposed to be evocative, naturally, but fear? Come ON now...and besides, how can music be scary? Listen to this and you'll find out.

Thick, sludgy sounds dripping from the ichor of darkness itself. Howls and screams from beyond the light - and performed mostly by two of the best black metal talents currently at work (Malefic, of Xasthur, and Wrest, of Leviathan). Song structures as indiscernable as the settings of your worst nightmares. Muddy production which leaves any signs of the obvious obscured in cold blackness.

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"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

--Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Halloween Music!, July 5, 2008

By 

A. Wilkerson (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black One (Audio CD)

Last year, my husband and I decided to go ALL out for Halloween, and boy did we! We had everything. Our house looked like a scene from every scary movie you can think of. We had skulls, spiders, skeletons, tons of creepy lights (purple, green, and red), two fog machines going, over $50 worth of fake spider webs (the kids love those) and tons more. It all looked perfectly splendid (or perfectly terrifying!), so we went out to the local Home Depot and picked up a pair of those speakers that look like rocks to play our music through. We had everything set up perfectly; the coffin that held the gobs of candy, the ghosts that would dance and make ghoulish sounds as you passed by, the zombie hand that would shoot up in front of his tombstone, just everything. But we were stumped. What music should we play? It had to be super creepy.
That's when my husband suggested I ask one of the neighborhood middle-schoolers, Kyle, what we should pick for our music. If you read this, thanks Kyle! So that's exactly what I did, and Kyle directed me to this album. He said it's one of his favorite tunes to listen to when he's feeling "down in the dumps." I went out and bought it right away, with high hopes, and sure enough it was dead on! It was the perfect soundtrack to the plethora of horror gadgets that had plagued our yard last year.
You should have seen the outcome, we counted over 400 kids that came by our place. That's over twice as many as there were last year, and I can't help but think this album must have contributed something to it. We got plenty of compliments and comments from both children and parents alike. Some kids even stood at the curb holding their parents hands because they were too scared!
It looks like we're going to have a bit more competition on our hands next year though. Some of our neighbors just had to know what album it was so they could purchase it for their own Halloween shows. I know for sure Betty and Martha got the album, and I think even Terry and Jon purchased a copy as well. I tried to persuade them to at least choose another of Sunn O)))'s albums, but they said this one was just too good.
And it is! I whole-heartedly recommend this gem to anyone out there looking to get spooked or to do the spooking! Just too good.