SUMAC might have started in 2014 as a way for musician Aaron Turner (Mamiffer, Old Man Gloom, ex-Isis) to create “the heaviest music of his career”, and, since expanding into a trio that year, the band’s nuanced explorations of the darker side of metal have set a high watermark for what is possible with titanic low-end and an experimental approach to structure. Turner is joined by drummer Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists) and bassist Brian Cook (Russian Circles, ex-These Arms Are Snakes, ex-Botch) in SUMAC, and on their newest LP offering, What One Becomes (Thrill Jockey), the group questions “fabricated structures of identity” and deals with “the sustained presence of anxiety” as our current living condition.
With “chaos” and “order” as guiding principles, What One Becomes presents musical ideas with the goal of dissolving and reassembling them. Throughout the album’s 5-tracks, SUMAC carves a heavy swath between these poles, using elements of death, doom, and psychedelic metal to create experiences of gripping tension and total release. The album opens with “Image of Control” and the experience is akin to passing through the looking glass as this cut goes from a disheveled and shambling version of itself into a locked-down and menacing groove. Similarly, “Rigid Man” is organized around a polar opposite, with the first part of this song tightly wound and buttoned-down, before a psychic schism allows it loosen up and wig out. By the time we reach “Clutch of Oblivion” and “Blackout“, the progression of ideas are fluid and cinematic. In fact, “Blackout” plays almost like a musical suite, as the song passes from crackling ambiance to an obliterating death march, and back, across its 17-plus minutes.
While the band’s experimental approach to structure/identity, as well as the psychic implications of chaos/control, animate the new record, SUMAC also makes good on guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner’s desire to create devastatingly heavy music. Recorded by Kurt Ballou of Converge, who has also recorded High on Fire and Torche, the tracks on What One Becomes possess powerfully resonant low-end. On “Rigid Man”, it darkens into a thick, black storm of roiling clouds, while on “Clutch of Oblivion”, the low-end forms deep pools of voluminous resonance. On “Blackout”, Ballou’s incredible sculpting of kick drum and deep bass sounds can be heard as they detonate with startling power to disturb this track’s hissing atmosphere, while on the album’s closer “Will to Reach”, Yacyshyn’s drums fire off piercing, rapid rounds of automatic gunshot.
Setting out to destabilize comfortable structures of musical and personal identity, theirs, as well as ours as listeners, the band continues to meld metal into intriguing forms. Often deeply unsettling, and almost always bone-crushingly heavy, What One Becomes is both a testament to the anxiety of our times, as well as a means for its exorcism. You can listen to the album below, as well as watch SUMAC perform the track “Clutch of Oblivion” live at the Complex in Los Angeles from earlier this year…
