OK, maybe it's just me, but for some reason I just don't see what all the hoopla is over Sunn0))). I'll give them one thing, their brand of doom/noise/drone doesn't sound like anything else you are bound to hear these days. The problem is I just don't find much of anything that resembles music in what they put out. These guys love to hurl tons of droning guitar sludge at the listener, not so much riffs as just endless lingering distorted chords and noise. On Black One there are even some tortured vocals, although not really of the sort that you would even classify as actual singing. "Cursed Realms (Of the Winterdemons)", which is a great song title, is as enjoyable as hearing nails raked on a chalk board. A song like "CandleGoat", which is basically a fuzzed out guitar or bass solo (hard to tell as every instrument sounds the same on this album) has some appeal for about a minute, but at 8-minutes long it just goes on forever. After a while it just sounds like someone tuning their instrument with the distortion on max. And don't let the epic songs lengths fool you into thinking that there is some stretched out progressive rock or doom metal happening here folks. This is just bleak, droning, ambient noise that does nothing for these ears, but Sunn0))) obviously has plenty of fans who dig stuff like this. Proceed with caution.
Track Listing
1) Sinn Nanna (2:19)
2) It Took the Night to Believe (5:56)
3) Cursed Realms (Of the Winterdemons) (10:10)
4) Orthodox Caveman (10:02)
5) CandleGoat (8:04)
6) Cry For the Weeper (14:38)
7) Bathory Erzsebet (16:00)