Sunn o))) The Black One Review.

Sunn o))) is not an original band. This does not make them bad, a musician is only good as good as his/her record collection, it just means that their influences are readily apparent.

On Black One, Sunn add second wave Black Metal to their droney, sludgey sound, creating a more concise, riff based sound  that should appeal to both fans of Sunn's pure-drone work and black-metallers curious about the guest spots from Xasthur's Malefic and Leviathan's Wrest. One only needs to look inside the CD booklet to see the influence black metal had on this album. It is nothing but pages of black paper, with one page devoted to dark, satanic texts. It adds to the dark, creeping, otherworldly tone of the record.

The album is very bottom heavy. The first two tracks only reach 7:75 minutes in total. It is not until the third track, a cover of Immortal's Cursed Realms (Of the Winterdemons) that a track breaks the ten minute mark. This is not a cover in the traditional sense. The song is rapidly altered, replacing black metal riffing with  thick layers of feedback and sampled sounds of glacial mountaintop winds. The vocals, courtesy of Malefic, are smothered by wooshy, snow covered mix. I can almost picture a lonely mountain traveler succumbing to the ice and snow, bellowing vengeful epithets to the gods above.

"Orthodox Caveman"  returns to the classic Sunn sound, Earth worship and all. The drums, provided by Australian Avante Garde artist,  "Oren Ambarchii", lend a huge tribal, violent element that fits the track name.

"CandleGoat"  features the repeated phrase, "The eternity opens- The cemetery lights up again." A line taken from "Freezing Moon" by Mayhem. Musically, "CandleGoat" contains buried hints of "Freezing Moon." The soft-lit, ambient melody combined with the gruff vocals of Stephen O'Malley give the piece a much softer tone.

Although each track is of merit, 16-minute album closer "Bathory Erzébet" is the true highlight. Recorded as a tribute to late Bathory frontman Thomas Forsberg, "Bathory Erzébet" is a sprawling, thick, beast of a track. Vocals were provided by Malefic who, legend has it, recorded them while locked in a casket to give them a raw, terrified edge. Whether or not this is true, the vocals are brutal, depressive, and overall top notch. The instrumentation is equally powerful, "The Count" plays something only referred to as "The virus." This should give you a glimpse of exactly how intense this track is.

When I listen to this album, I can't help but think of an interview Mayhem guitarist Euronymous gave in 1991. He stated that Black Metal could be "Ordinary Heavy Metal or just Noise. What's important is that it's Satanic, that's what makes it Black Metal."  Sunn seem to have revived that idea, crafting an album of progressive drone heavily indebted to the early second wave of black metal and it's Satanic ideals. 
10/10