Sumac plays metal so heavy it could be from Jupiter
What’s the deal? There’s heavy metal and then there’s metal so heavy that even avowed fans of heavy metal blanch in its presence.
Sumac already operates at the extreme latter end of that spectrum, but, on its recently released second album What One Becomes, it’s as if the American band and its outsized personal definition of heaviness had been transported to, say, Jupiter: a planet where the local gravity is nearly 2.5 times that of our home planet and a 300-pound human being would suddenly weigh 709.2 pounds.
So, yes, Sumac is that kind of heavy. Jupiter heavy. Fearlessly formless and experimental, too, forsaking most commonly held ideas of musical structure in favour of vague, washing movements of pure, leaden sound that tend to lurch mercilessly from roiling boils of molten noise to slow-mo, low-end tectonic chugs to Sunn O)))-like ambient-doom stasis to assaultive, triple-time tech-metal uprisings within the same piece.
What One Becomes presents but five “exercises of chaos and control” in its hour-long running time, all of which intend to convey — as bandleader Aaron Turner states in the bio — the feeling of “living with the sustained presence of anxiety,” while “avoiding reliance on musical devices of cathartic release to provide escape from this condition.”
Sumac’s “supergroup” pedigree is unimpeachable, by the way.
Turner presided over late, great sludge-metal outfit Isis for 13 years until it split — with impeccable timing in hindsight, given the abuse to which that name has since been subjected — in 2010, while bassist Brian Cook has played with Russian Circles and Botch and drummer Nick Yacyshyn holds it down behind the kit in Vancouver hardcore combo Baptists.
These guys are all “skills.” There is no messing around. Sum up what you do in a few simple sentences “Sumac is loud and difficult,” says Cook, somewhat euphemistically. “There is a certain austerity to the band’s strategy. Its armaments are relegated to a few key components. But while the band employs the primitivistic vocabulary of underground metal — down-tuned guitars, distorted bass, double kick drumming — Sumac uses that lexicon to describe a much more complex landscape.
“Audiences looking for escapist timbres and 4/4 comfort zones are bound to be disappointed. Audiences more interested in new frontiers than in the latest throwback or genre revival are encouraged to attend.” What’s a song I need to hear right now? “Blackout.” If you’re gonna dive in, dive in head first and bear the full brunt of what Sumac has to offer. For more than 17 minutes. Where can I see them play? At the Garrison on Aug. 7, with Jon Mueller and nordra.