White1

Not a patch on the previous album "Flight of the Behemoth" though to be fair that album was a hard act to follow and after a few spins "White1" does have a certain charm of its own. Melody, changes in key and other conventional music elements aren't important here: atmosphere and mood take prominence. On this album also, texture becomes a dominating feature: the guitars are rough and the earth-shaking rumbles are sure to impress listeners deeply, being reminiscent of flashes of lightning and the thunder that follows. The ambience is almost but not quite sinister in feel.

Julian Cope's lyrics on "My Wall" may make some people cringe but he's a witty and erudite gentleman whose writing (if the lyrics are at all representative) is far beyond the level we usually see in many published novels these days let alone the level of popular and underground music. His spoken voice delivery takes up only the first half of the track. I'm sure that after 20-plus years the lyrics won't look half as fruitcake as Robert Plant's lyrics on the Led Zeppelin number "Stairway to Heaven" and look at the reverence many people still give to that song.

Let's continue ... "The Gates of Ballard" features part of a traditional Norwegian folk poem "Haavard Hedde" chanted in Norwegian by Runhild Gammalsaeter, a long-time associate of the Sunn0))) men since the mid-1990s when she fronted Thorr's Hammer (she is now a biologist with a PhD in cell physiology and heads a biotechnology company in Norway). The music is a fairly smooth ride with a steady chugging guitar and a programmed rhythm sequence. The poem is about a man, Haavard, who establishes a farm, marries and has a couple of kids, and grows a tiny forest of two pine trees. Anyone who wishes to know what the fella does to the pine trees can visit this website address: http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/storm/nordavind.html#3.

On "A Shaving of the Horn that Speared You", Sunn0))) throw away the usual heavy metal elements for a formless tone piece with bits of acoustic guitar, and vocal and various other effects that simulate breathing or sleeping. Al the elements barely hang together with sounds on the edge of the barely audible though if you pay very close attention you'll discover a lot of humming and very soft moaning. The track could have been made slower and the amount of acoustic guitar reduced to make for a more menacing piece.

Perhaps not one of the Sunn0))) men's better efforts but the duo are to be commended for not taking themselves too seriously here.

An original version of this review was written for The Sound Projector (Issue 12, 2004) which has now gone out of print.