To experience a performance by Seattle’s ambient metal kings, Sunn O))) is not like attending a conventional rock’n’roll gig, by any means. For a start, there are no drums, no bass and these days, no vocals. All the music comes from just two guitars, wielded by Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, and an awful lot of amplifiers, speakers and sustain pedals.
It isn’t just in their instrumentation that Sunn O))) defy standard rock’n’roll lore either. Dressed in monks’ habits, they move slowly around the stage, as if in choreographed half-speed, for a show that might be characterised as being part Spinal Tap and part The Wicker Man with art direction by early nineteenth century artistic genius William Turner, all to a pagan soundtrack of very heavy and constantly rolling thunder. In short, there’s nothing half-hearted about their gigs, either in terms of the stage production or the sheer volume of their music.
So, it was for Sunn O)))’s return to Birmingham this week. An audience of pre-dominantly, but not wholly, middle aged men in super obscure heavy metal band t-shirts awaited O’Malley and Anderson stepping into the stage at the O2 Institute almost reverently, as clouds of dry ice built up around a solid wall of speaker cabinets and the recorded sounds of stage banter from an old show by Geordie Black Metal originators, Venom echoed around the auditorium. Eventually, a hand appeared out of the fog, flashing the Devil’s Horns and soon afterwards a low rumble built up before a tsunami of extreme volume blasted over everyone present. The floor shook as if something seismic was occurring to the Earth’s crust in the West Midlands and didn’t let up for the next 90 minutes or so, as the audience was treated to a vision of the Apocalypse that would be enough to scare the living daylights out of those with a weak constitution, if not rearrange their internal organs with the intense vibrations emitting from the wall of speaker cabinets.
Sunn O))) may have released numerous albums of their ambient metal but it would take someone with more acute hearing than me to be able to distinguish which tunes O’Malley and Anderson set about in Birmingham. Instead, the rolling thunder seemed to mutate and twist as ever more impressive clouds of fog enveloped the stage, lit variously in blue, red, green and white. The audience, meanwhile, responded either by standing open-mouthed, gazing at the stage in deep contemplation or with hands raised in ecstasy, flashing the Devil’s Horns, as if in some quasi-religious trance.
Inevitably, however, the thunder eventually came to an end and the clouds parted to reveal O’Malley and Anderson with their guitars held aloft in reverence to their audience. Soaking up waves of appreciative applause, they then put their instruments down, bowed and were gone, leaving those present to contemplate and process just what they had experienced.
Sunn O)))’s music is certainly not be for everyone. However, a dramatic show of such intensity is a spectacle in which anyone brave enough should immerse themselves at some point, or forever find themselves just bumbling along in the cultural slow lane. This evening provided one such opportunity, for sure.
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