Stretching the Extreme Metal Continuum

Basking in the Sunn O))) at VEGA.

Everyone remembers their first time – their first time seeing Sunn O))) live, of course. And the second and third times, and perhaps even more. This was the main topic of conversation before and after their latest show in Copenhagen on Friday, June 19th, at VEGA. Was it on the Black One tour with Earth? Or that time they toured with Attila Csihar on vocals and in insane costumes? No, you really needed to see them on the Life Metal tour?! Also, what was up with that seated show a couple of years back at the Music Conservatory with Kali Malone? Whether they’re die-hard fans who travel to see the band in different places, newbies who were told they had to experience the drone-metal titans in concert at least once in their lives, or anyone in between, everyone arrives well aware of the mythology surrounding the band’s live shows.

VEGA’s Instagram ad for the show played up the theme, too. “You’ve probably never experienced a concert quite like this before. The room fills with smoke, the lights disappear, and then sound starts moving through the floor beneath you… not just loud, it’s physical. Sunn O))) stretch guitar tones so far that they stop feeling like songs, you stop checking the time, you stop thinking about anything outside the room, it feels massive, slow, almost unreal…” While the description is not inaccurate, it is curious to see this supposedly unique experience boiled down to a generic promo targeting unsuspecting casual concert-goers as potential new converts to this decidedly niche act. (They needn’t advertise to old fans anyway; they only showed up in the comments to correct the ad by pointing out that “O)))” in Sunn O))) is actually silent.)

As hinted by their latest full-length album – their first self-titled one and the first one for Sub Pop – O’Malley and Anderson seemed to have unlocked a new vigor by reverting to the duo formation, making it a promising time to see them live again. And even though this wasn’t our first time overall, it was definitely our first time seeing Sunn O))) right after catching some actual sun (and a jellyfish sting), as the thermometer hit an oppressive 29°C that Friday. It had been thirty years since VEGA had undergone a major makeover, and the venue was showing its age. The building was baking in the sun all day, its massive windows trapping the daytime glare with no air conditioning in sight.

We were packed into a dark room with a few hundred other souls, held hostage by the heat, which forced everyone into a sluggish, collective slow motion. Trying to find relief by constantly cycling through pints of beer and bottles of water proved to be a fool’s errand. Then again, an almost suffocating atmosphere actually felt entirely appropriate while waiting for a performance rooted in the dark realms of doom and black metal.

The Swedish composer, experimental artist, and XKatedral label co-founder Maria W Horn supported the band on the Nordic leg of their tour. We had the pleasure of seeing her in Copenhagen on several occasions, but mostly in small experimental music venues. Despite her strong ties to the avant-garde world, one should not forget the harsh electronic influences that permeate Horn’s work, nor her proclaimed roots in the black metal scene. This blend makes her the perfect opening act for a duo known for bringing metal to experimental audiences and vice versa. Getting to see her perform on such a big stage with a massive PA setup made for a new and immensely gratifying experience.

The sticky, melting atmosphere was perfectly set when Horn appeared onstage. She stood framed by a massive wall of SUNN amplifiers with a traditional flower crown resting on her head – the show took place during Midsommar – as she leaned over her modular case. While she tweaked a chaotic web of patch cables stretching across her rig, the sound quickly escalated to an intense, crushing volume. The experience was entirely visceral; the low-frequency vibrations bypassed the ears altogether and vibrated straight through the floor into one’s ankles. The sonic approach of such rich texture felt almost cinematic as the music maintained an epic grandiosity, the melodic parts additionally injecting the performance with a deeply organic feel. No stranger to site-specific sound installations, Horn seemed to visibly enjoy exercising power over the large hall of VEGA.

As thick smoke began flooding the room, a crass voice roared through the PA: “Come onnnn!!! Roaaargh! Hell yeah!” Looking toward the stage, filled with a massive wall of those very SUNN amplifiers that gave the band their name, some audience members seemed genuinely confused at first. Having instinctively started clapping and shouting excitedly, they soon realized that there was the sound of the crowd coming from the speakers as well. Any impression that the musicians were speaking to the audience live quickly dissolved as the collage stretched into a low-quality audio, ten-minute medley of stage rant (the line “It’s fucking hot in here tonight, eh?” resonated particularly well), shifting crowd noise, and rapid-fire snippets of songs lasting no more than a few seconds. The archival crowd laughed, and so did we. We were witnessing the deliberate nod to an extreme metal tradition.

The intro was the complete bootleg recording of Venom frontman Cronos doing some classic, erratic crowd work – with the music cut out – from their 1986 New Jersey show with Black Flag as the unlikely opener. This recording of Cronos’s banter was even released as a 7” on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label. Anchoring yourself in a musical tradition by recontextualizing the past is always a delicate tightrope walk, but the Seattle heavyweights pulled it off effortlessly. By invoking Venom – the band that single-handedly named an entire genre with their seminal album Black Metal – Sunn O))) brilliantly acknowledged their roots.

This sonic history lesson served, on the one hand, as a stark reminder of their place in the continuum of extreme music and, on the other hand, as a humorous reference to the intense fan culture and expectations surrounding the live show. Cronos is heard repeatedly reacting to the many different requests being shouted at him from the audience, resulting in hilarious responses, such as “What the fuck do you mother***s want to hear?”, “You’re saying no, you’re saying yes, so what the fuck?”, culminating with: “What?! Everybody likes different songs?!” In the context of Sunn O)))’s own show, which has acquired quite a reputation, this felt like a fun jab at both the audience and themselves. (Then there’s also the fact that one of the tracks off the new album is titled “Does Anyone Hear Like Venom?”)

Despite the different tours and live lineups, much of the performance and interaction with the audience relies on established routines. The duo, wearing black hoods, always sneaks onto the stage in a thick haze of smoke. Each member slowly raises a hand before finally and simultaneously strumming a chord. The audience raises their open palms at specific moments. It’s almost choreographed, and it’s almost always the same. Yet somehow, none of this ever gets old, and it’s always exciting all over again – in different countries and venues, on different tours, in different company.

When the wall of sound finally built up with the Black One classic “CandleGoat,” people raised their hands to the sky as if they were in an evangelical church, offering themselves up to the visceral experience of being completely overtaken by low frequencies. The slow, piercing tones of the duo, combined with the smoke machine forming an X shape over the hot, humid room, made the experience feel as corporeal as expected.

With band tracks averaging around 15 minutes, there isn’t much room for packing the setlist. Then again, it’s amusing to think that fans would go to a Sunn O))) concert expecting to hear a certain favorite song. Throughout the show, audience members assumed various poses to best absorb the seismic vibrations and frequencies pulsing through the hall and their bodies, ranging from unbothered stoicism to open-palmed, meditative standing positions. Dressed in wooden panels, the VEGA space felt appropriate for this particular Sunn O))) tour, following their most “organic” album – if you can call it that – pared down to only the original duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson and their guitars (albeit with insane micing!), recorded in a studio in the woods.

Like classic metal slowed down to half-speed or slower, instead of black metal’s fast-paced riffs and tremolo picking, Sunn O))) took a good minute or more for each strum of the guitar. Bouncing back off VEGA’s walls and floors, and piercing through our bodies, the sound filled the room like a ghost, as described by Leila Taylor in her analysis of American Gothic, Darkly: “One of my favorite explanations for the existence of ghosts is the trace. Some events are so powerful in their violence or anger that it leaves behind a remnant of that death, like the debossed imprint left through the pages when you press too hard with the pen. The ghost hasn’t come back to visit us in the present, rather, we are seeing a glimpse of the past.” Indeed, like enveloping the room into many porous glimpses of the past, Sunn O))) superimpose past strums, building tracks on riffs left lingering in the room.

As amusing and auto-ironic as the whole lore has become, it’s both true that you need to see Sunn O))) at least once and that seeing them once doesn’t mean you’ve exhausted the entire experience. The general format may remain relatively consistent, but the sensation is always distinct, and almost always transformative.