Customer Reviews

Black One

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

---

"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"

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.

This is some sick stuff. This is the only Sunn O))) album I've heard, and I don't have too much to compare it to. People call it Drone Metal, and that describes it well enough, though this one has got a definite black metal vibe to it as well. In my mind this is kinda the culmination of what black metal should be, just pulse and atmosphere on and on forever This is mostly just an endless wall of noise, rumbling, feedback ridden bass and ridiculously deep, powerfully distorted guitar. Very, very slow, no drums at all apart from a few little bits of percussion at a few points. Largely instrumental but with a fair bit of inhuman black metal shrieking and groaning in some of the tracks. It's generally very repetitious and has virtually no melody, and it seems like it should be boring, honestly, but it's truly bruising and hypnotic. Their note on the back: 'Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results' definitely proves true. Ya gotta have this as loud as you can handle it for it totally work. Anyway, definitely one of the darkest things I've ever heard. Highly Recommended.

Also, the cover art is awesome.

If you're the type of metal maniac who demands that certain criteria be met before committing to rocking your brains out, this is probably not the album for you. For all their plentiful volume, Sunn 0))) strip away many of the basic elements of metal over the past 30 years, such as speed, flashy musicianship and, oh yeah, drums. While scorched-earth assault artists such as Khanate move at an average tempo comparable to George Romero's zombies (they want to bleed you--slow!), they stick to structureds not too different than the blues artists of yesteryear. Sunn 0))) go another step beyond--"Black One" suggests what Phillip Glass might sound like if he sacrificed his soul to Lord Belial and vowed to destroy all in his path. The compositions here--you can't really call them "songs"--move at a pace that is quite literally glacial. This is the sound of hell freezing over, and it sure ain't pretty.

A few hipster indie-rockers such as Sleater-Kinney and the White Stripes get some attention for not using a bass guitar, but for musical purity of purpose they can't match Sunn 0))). Their sound is all about the bass, to the extent that it'll make even the toughest moshers need asbestos diapers. Heck, they sound like Godzilla just sat on your face and let a big one rip. "Cry of the Weeper" includes about a second of trebly feedback toward the beginning, but this quickly resolves into the type of sound made by the alien tripods in Spielberg's "War of the Worlds"--only way nastier. One thing you won't find on "Black One" is drums. What rhythm there is comes from one distorted chord slowly giving way to the next. The tracks don't move so much as they decompose. Only two of them clock in under 10 minutes, so the effect is something like being buried alive. Actually, that's kind of what happened to guest vocalist Malefic for the soul-crushing closer "Bathory Erzsebet"--he was allegedely recorded from inside a coffin! That's what you call commitment to your art.

In some spots, "Black One" may be closer to dark ambient than metal. Fans of Lustmord might want to check this out, although even they may not be prepared for the sheer volume of this monster. While some black metalers have dabbled in the dark ambient genre, that kind of thing is a more peaceful kind of death. "Black One" is the kind of death that hurts--a lot. Still, I can't help myself from enduring it.

TERRIFYING! That is how i would describe this latest Sunn 0))) album. _Black One_ is heavy-as-fkk droning post-metal born of a lost world's hellbound nightmares. It rumbles and churns with colossal thunder and glistens with coiling blades of blackened electricity, and it will test your force of will -- after an hour or so when the album ends, you may doubt that your sanity is still with you. "Cry of the Weeper" is my favorite track -- the screaming will haunt me forever. You too will be forever changed by this album -- you won't realize it at first, but someday, down the road, the order with which you perceive reality will crumble. It may begin with a subtle, barely perceptible change, but once it begins and it becomes known to you, it will devour all you known in its obsessive entropy of chaos and disharmony. To me, that's AWESOME. Warning: avoid this album if you are at the pedestrian stages of requiring melody to be reached by music.

Sunn0))) have officially proven their status in the ambient/drone/doom/metal genre, which is that they have blurred all boundaries and are now their own entity to be reckoned with. Their influences (most notable being the Earth worship) are still obvious, but Sunn0))) themselves have raised the bar as far as creating an atmosphere through caverns of chaotic sounds. Sounds they can call their own. Sounds that will wrap around you like a shroud and pull you into a black hole of pure unadulterated evil.

Imagine yourself trapped. It could be anywhere. For all you know you could be in a comfortable surrounding like your bedroom, but you can't make that call, because you're immersed in complete darkness and can't see a thing, and worst of all, you cannot move. Soon you realize you're not anywhere you've ever been before. Its almost as if you're floating in space. Its just you and the dark. And who knows what lies beyond what you can't see. You're now forced to rely on your few remaining senses to comprehend your situation...most importantly, hearing. Your coherent interpretation of sound is the only thing reassuring your sanity at this point, but the sounds you are hearing are not reassuring of much else. You begin to feel frightened initially, but upon further listens these foreign noises become commonplace and you feel less threatened. But little do you know the only reason you're no longer afraid is because you're slowly slipping into an inescapable realm of pure insanity and dimentia. You're aware enough still to slowly realize this, and you become horrified, because you are now not only completely aware of your state, you remember that you are still trapped in nothingness, and the sounds around you become more and more disturbing, and louder, to the point that its deafening. But even after you feel your eardrums burst and the little sense of touch you still have can feel the blood trickling down the sides of your neck, even now in complete silence you can hear it all inside your head still. Your mind is no longer a part of you. Its a seperate entity that now has complete control of you. You are still in complete darkness, and utterly helpless. Your fear has grown into a state of pure catatonia. For as long as you've been immersed in this nothingness, even if your eyes adjusted to the darkness, you wouldn't be able to see a god damn thing. All you see is what your mind wants you to see. You see nothing. Everything has gone to black. You're engulfed in a sea of anything and everything that has ever made you afraid. Your fears have overcome you in a manner that you wouldn't have even been able to comprehend in a conscious and fully aware state. You sink in and out of this coma you've been forced into, but only to be greeted by the sounds again. You go back and forth at what almost seems to be at your discretion, but it doesn't matter anyway because you know your life as you know it is over. Something beyond your concept of rational thought has taken over your whole body and mind. Just when you think you've sunken into the deepest darkest pit that you could possibly sink in, you awake in a full state of consciousness. You feel completely healthy and all of your senses are in check. You're in a well lit room and you feel one with the world once again. The nightmare is over.

Yet you feel detatched, somehow. You've become so familiar with darkness that now you can't stand to be out of it. You shut off all the lights in your bedroom and shut all of the windows and doors, and lock them. You shut the blinds and unplug everything. But its not the same. And now you feel the similar state of insanity slowly creeping up on you again. Its a vicious cycle and there is no escape.

None. Nothing. Darkness.

Enjoy your stay.

The other reviewers aren't lying, when you listen to this in the dark, with it so loud that you feel like the sound is going to swallow you whole, you would probably be scared. And since the songs are so long, you just never know when one of the guest vocalists going to scream, when something could happen. It's like you are living in a dark world when you never know what lies behind the corner or what certain sounds are, or anything else of that nature. If not of that, it's just great to be engulfed in layers of dark feedback, riffs, thick wall of bass lines, and dark ambiance.

Black One is black. Even the whole packaging is dark. The whole book thing that comes in it is filled with about 8 pages of blackness. Aside from the credits and a poem, everything else is just black. Everything else is black, aside from the back of the book which features some weird floating thing.

After listening to this, I find it hard to go back to some of the black metal out there, bands like Venom have long lost their appeal, and hearing Chris Barnes on Tombs of the Mutilated is laughable. While there are black metal musicians on here, each of them actually work their vocals well, at least to me. Malefic sounds like a tortured soul buried in a freezing hell's mounds of snow on Cursed Realm's of the Winterdemons, and in Bathory Erzebet, it seems to me the calls of a soul, somewhere buried in a coffin, who knows? Could it be Bathory herself? A soul that was killed by her? It's stuff like this that would really scare you.

Most of the songs totally bombard you with nothing but slow, doom riffs, such as Unorthodox Cavemen. Some others have creepy bass feedbacks. No matter what though, it's great either way. This isn't your average metal album, as there are hardly any drums or a single guitar solo. You should throw all you know and think about metal, because they can take black metal vocals and actually convey the sense of evil they go through. Unlike using the usual raspy voice of black metal, they scream like they would if they actually were through the pain. They sound like they are suffering, from first person point of view.

Well, I really can't say much else. These guys are pretty much right, that you feel like these people could suck the soul right out of you. Just look at their live set up. In black hoods, they fog the premise and blast you. To me, however it really doesn't scare me, but it helps me explore the darker side of life, and maybe even me. Happy go lucky spoiled girls who think the whole world is a fairy tale, you will never know. Hey, I think going on the darker side is fun. I can always come back. You will never know how, or probably even know what I mean. This album has more darkness and gloom that most bands have in their entire careers.

9.5/10

I came upon that realization while listening to Sunn O))). Any pedestrian description would be an act of futility, as their music cannot be clinicized-- It's as obscure as their phonetically confused name. But I'll try. Sunn O))) play droning and ritualistic post-black metal, that threatens imminent horror with a pulsating singularity of sordid noise. Almost no percussion, (besides what the liner notes credit as "caveman drums") just uber-distorted guitars and sparse sampling. As their insidious sounds coil around your exposed spine, you could swear that the matter around you is decaying into a black muck that you're sinking into. Crank the volume until it shakes your skull, turn off the lights, and prepare to be coerced through elements of the human mind better left unknown. Don't get me wrong, you can enjoy this... Just not by conventional music standards. Laugh, but Sunn O))) seems to challenge the listener's soul. Their rattling bass seems to fluctuate your being each crashing note, and moments of exploding feedback feel as if the darkness is trying to consume you. Amusingly, the masterminds of the American genre coined as suicidal black metal, Wrest and Malefic (of Leviathan and Xasthur) make vocal cameos. Both sound as ghoulish as ever. Overall, Sunn O)))'s Black One is an incredible sonic endeavor, evoking a sense of unbridled fear like nothing I've heard-- Fear of the unknown, fear of the known, fear of what lurks in one's own mind. From the multi-dimensional vaccuum of texturous guitars initiating the album, to the laughing distortion (Yes, LAUGHING DISTORTION) that ends it, Sunn O))) will suck you into a dense realm of no light or respite- one that you won't be sure you've escaped once it ends. Recommended. But be prepared for a powerful migraine.
- Thus says the Pellington

(P.S. Rumor has it they hit the brown note while playing live. AhAhahaA)

Most everyone reviewing this album seems to be pretty spot on, so I won't repeat what they've all said.

If you think the vocals on this song sound like they were recorded in a coffin, that is because the vocals on this song WERE recorded in a coffin. To get that small, suffocated, claustrophobic sound, they actually locked the vocalist (Malefic) in a wooden coffin with a microphone and then loaded that coffin into the back of an old Cadillac hearse.

So there you have it - the creepiest album ever recorded just got a whole lot creepier.