If you pop Monoliths & Dimensions, the latest album by iconoclastic drone metal act SUNN 0)), into your Windows Media player, the genre that pops up is “classical.” That seemed funny to me at first – then I started listening to the record. While nobody’s going to mistake these sounds for Bach, I’d argue that they’re closer to classical music than to rock. Co-conspirators GREG ANDERSON and STEPHEN O’MALLEY are joined here by MAYHEM vocalist ATTILA CSIHAR, experimental musician OREN AMBARCHI and violist and BILL FRISELL sideman EYVIND KANG, who also arranged the small strings/horns ensemble. “Hunting&Gathering (Cydonia)” comes closest to metal, with a riff stretched out to impossible lengths and Csihar’s vocal being nearly aggressive. But the other three songs drift through waves of droning bass guitar, floating feedback, orchestral flourishes, haunted voices (both Csihar’s and, on “Big Church,” a choir) and layers of notes and chords laid carefully across each other, with no notion paid to anything approaching rock rhythm. The music is alternately soothing and disturbing, sometimes both at once. Monoliths & Dimensions stakes out new territory even for Sunn 0)) – it ain’t for everyone, but it’s undeniably a pure representation of artistic vision.
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