Vi Sonus Veris Nigrae Malitiaes

Yes, well, it's hard to rate such an album - are you meant to rate its musicianship (there's none), its atmosphere (there's heeeeaps), or the complete package of audio/visual evil (which is intense)? I know for me, it's one of the quintessential albums of genre-breaking mystery, that is STILL hard to define properly. Yes, it's just a buncha silly noise, and no, it's not really "metal", but it's certainly as "metal" as anything Sunn O have ever done, and has to be seen from the same sort of viewpoint. It may be a non-metal buncha silly noise, but it's a *groundbreaking* non-metal buncha silly noise.

And it's evil as fuck.

If I was reviewing it straight after hearing it for the very first time, I'd be giving it a 100, and raving on and on about "this is nothing like anything I've ever heard before, fuck, these guys have broken my brain" - but I'm not. I'm writing this after many years listening to many many things just as fringey, just as abstract, and perhaps even more powerfully disturbing. So it loses some points for hindsight, I guess; although it is most definitely disturbing and abstract and kinda redefined black metal, there's been so much more evil, hypnotic, disturbing and madness-inducing released since. My point is, I suppose, that all that other stuff probably wouldn't have ever been released if this album hadn't've been released already.

So there you go. I don't think you're meant to *listen* to it like a metal album - you're meant to *experience* it like a thunderstorm.