SUNN O))) – SUNN O)))

Ten albums and more than a quarter of a century in to their career, American drone duo SUNN O))) return with an eponymous debut for legendary label Sub Pop – and it lands like a homecoming; to basics, to origin points, to the fertile ground from which the drone metal they have helped pioneer first crept into the world via Earth and the Pacific Northwest. 

Notably, there are no collaborators this time. As a duo, they strip things back—but ‘stripped-back’ in the SUNN O))) universe doesn’t mean understated. Quite the opposite: this is vast, grandiose music, built from layers upon layers of guitar, captured with an almost obsessive scale (reportedly close to 200 microphones). Notes themselves are sparse, even elusive—but that’s never been the point. This is music about texture, about space, about the physicality of sound itself. If music is about the space between the notes as Debussy said, SUNN O))) are explorers, inviting you to look deeper and longer. 

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Opener ‘XXANN’ gestures toward familiar terrain before subtly warping it, threading field recordings and negative space through the duo’s seismic churn. ‘Glory Black’ is the quiet revelation, its submerged piano adding a solemn, almost devotional hue. Often, SUNN O))) have relied on collaborators – the drums of Boris, the voice of Scott Walker – to provide a counterpoint to their seismic guitars; here, just a duo, the simple melancholic refrain of a piano feels almost revolutionary, and a strikingly emotional finale. 

At over an hour, it’s not casual listening. But SUNN O))) have always been about testing limits, pushing boundaries, (destroying speakers). That’s precisely why the album works and why the band have endured: ‘SUNN O)))’ feels like a reaffirmation—of process, of power, and of why they remain darlings of the underground.

8/10

Words: David Weaver

for fans of Earth, Anna Von Hausswolff, just sitting looking at concrete for hours on end 

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