SUMAC – What One Becomes

Having released one of 2016’s most ethereally beautiful albums in the form of Mamiffer’s The World Unseen, former Isis dude Aaron Turner crops up again with one of its heaviest. And boy, do we mean heavy. The five mini-epics that make up What One Becomes are absolute spine-crushers; real hole-in-the-surface-of-the-earth stuff, and their density and duration make for a punishing listen.

You’d think Turner’s guttural roar plus the unrelenting darkness of the music might be overpowering, but there’s subtle textures at play here too – Rigid Man’s switches suddenly from blood’n’thunder to a wash of sensual, near-ambient tonality, lending exhilarating release to its inevitable return to the sounds of iron fists and tumbling walls.

Meanwhile, Clutch of Oblivion’s locked-groove riffing even manages to sound hopeful before heroically falling in on itself. There’s real heart buried underneath SUMAC’s furious, deafening bleakness; it can just feel like a serious excavation job to locate it.