Review: Sunn O))) – Eternity’s Pillars b/w Raise the Chalice & Reverential
Returning with a 12″ single on their new home Sub Pop, it’d be easy to crack wise about Sunn O)) putting out a single that’s over 30 minutes long and move on but the awkwardly monikered Eternity’s Pillar b/w Raise The Chalice & Reverential—from here just mercifully shortened to Eternity’s Pillar—is a surprisingly accessible record in its scale and writing, one that represents the band at something of a crossroads in their career.
It’s actually been a fair bit of time since Sunn O))) were the universal darlings of drone metal, having been for a time one of the few acts in extreme metal to breach critical containment, earning laudits from publications outside the metal and experimental music sphere. The peak of their powers was arguably from the sleeper acclaim for 2009’s still-excellent Monoliths & Dimensions into their trio of collaborative records with Nurse With Wound, Ulver and then Scott Walker, and ending after the release of 2015’s Kannon, a record few people talk about now, given it was sandwiched awkwardly between two eras of Sunn O))), the most recent of which really started with the release of Life Metal. Oddly enough, most of the discussion I remember surrounding Kannon was related to the liner notes written by Aliza Shvarts, the most consistent criticism of which was they were apparently too pretentious; if pretentious liner notes are enough to dismiss an album then I don’t think there’d be a single active band left in metal. I thought Kannon was actually pretty interesting and managed to engage me in spite of (though in hindsight maybe because of) its shorter runtime. In terms of solo full-length material from Sunn O))), it followed Monoliths & Dimensions, an album so strongly entwined with Christian liturgical motifs and plainsong that the sudden shift—attempting to in some way evoke a vague “eastern” liturgical sound in the same way Monoliths & Dimensions evoked a vague sense of familiar “western” liturgical sounds—had to have been a deliberate choice.
It was a brief moment of respite in a trajectory that saw Sunn O))) rely less on space and timbre for their atmosphere, instead more heavily drawing on an ever-growing breadth of influences and collaborators. There’s a persistent notion that when a band draws on and incorporates more and more disparate influences it leads to a more dynamic, inherently superior record, which is a sentiment that feels especially hollow in metal, where so often bands peak with earlier, rougher albums and demos. The idea that releases like The Grimmrobe Demos or Kannon are of an innately lesser quality and are less ambitious because of a seemingly narrower group of influences is fundamentally untrue to me because the great irony of Sunn O))) is that while being the most notable active drone metal musicians, the fact that they’re inextricably linked to hardcore has always made them surprisingly direct in their delivery. The band set-up of drone metal in general helps reduce the innate abstraction of a traditionally “academic” style of music, but this is heightened by their connections to traditional doom and Washington hardcore.
Now I understand that’s a lot of preamble for a release like this but given the fact that Eternity’s Pillars… features just the core duo set-up of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, coupled with the fact that this is their debut on Sub Pop records, indicates to me at least partially that this record represents a back-to-basics, reflective period for the band. Sunn O)))’s output in the past decade has been much more eclectic, often highlighted by the large number of collaborators involved across multiple projects, so this return to the two-man setup feels like both a hearkening back to their early demo and live material as well as a direct tribute to (and an attempt to evoke) their earliest and most obvious influence, fellow Sub Pop alumni Earth and their very earliest, minimal records.
Listening to opening track “Eternity’s Pillars” after either Life Metal or Pyroclasts shows a sharp change in production sensibilities, notably due to the absence of the late Steve Albini whose sound really helped mould those albums into something very distinct in the discography of the band. It’s not a track that envelopes in the same way; instead of trying to surround you with an almost meditative heaviness, it pushes down on you from above in a much more sinister way, more reminiscent of something off of White2 or Flight Of The Behemoth. That the track title is directly referencing Alice Coltrane is odd to me because while the band talks about her belief in “music’s capacity to attain spiritual transcendence,” the track struggles with its recurring pseudo-raga to evoke any sort of meditative, reflective feeling in me. It instead feels remedial and simple in the way that, to be fair, probably is quite emblematic of the intentions and sensibilities that guided the early years of Sunn O))), but ultimately just seems like it falls short of its intentions. I can imagine what they had in mind for the track—a time-dilating spiritual raga, like a metallic version Time Machines-era Coil—but in execution it just falls flatter than intended.
In a way, the production is caught between two worlds; on one hand it’s a regression from the lusher, encompassing sound of their recent material but on the other hand it’s far too clear and detailed in its sound to fit in snugly with, say, The Grimmrobe Demos or Black One. And maybe that’s always a consequence of being an established band, that the aesthetics and lack of clarity you exhibited early on that you think of as a hindrance is something that some day you’ll long to recapture, even if you know it’s impossible. Could you imagine if Ulver actually capitulated to the portion of their fanbase that wants a new album like Nattens Madrigal in 2025, and how fucking bad it would it sound recorded 30 years later with faux-raw production? “Eternity’s Pillars” as a song isn’t anything that extreme but it just falls a bit flat in its intent, so what you’re left with is something less than the sum of its parts and that only highlights the conflicted sound of the single as a whole.
“Raise The Chalice” feels more traditionally doom-influenced in its pacing. That more condensed, straight-to-the-point sound is intentional, the title “Raise The Chalice” being a tribute to Seattle hardcore staple and late Brotherhood vocalist Ron Guardipee. The second half of the track is the highlight of the whole single, hitting that sweet spot of locked-in, head-bobbing engagement emphasized by the acidic buzz of the background static. I’ve always thought that the slower end of metal engenders the same sort of response that you get listening to minimal techno, in that sense. The dithering, shrill background noise that sits almost politely atop the mix adds a lot to the texture, and is probably as close to a conventional harmony you’ll get from Sunn O))).
The track comes to a relatively abrupt close before the closing song “Reverential” lurches into earshot, and to me it feels decidedly more menacing than anything else on the 12″. Something about the more liberal use of screaming feedback gives it a uniquely angry feeling. Nothing in Sunn O)))’s catalogue really scans as “violent,” at least not in a traditional sense, so it’s funny for a song that is described in the band’s press release as an “antiphon” that “pays respects and sends loud praise to those who came before us” to be this outward and full-force, relatively speaking. The whole single has a sense of progression to it, getting heavier as it goes, growing more and more primitive in its writing until you reach the end which just sounds like claps of thunder and downpour.
On the whole, it’s a fine release, but one that doesn’t really give much indication of what the future holds for Sunn O))). Maybe its the sense of re-treaded ground that makes it feel so insubstantial—this feeling that the progression of Sunn O))), from an obvious worship band embedded in genre conventions, to one that would hit their peak by eschewing those elements and incorporating disparate musical influences, has regressed back to making the sort of music you’d not give much attention to if you found it scrolling through Bandcamp or on the lower end of some online distro. Ultimately, there’s an endless amount of bands doing what Eternity’s Pillar… does, and while that itself isn’t a condemnation of current Sunn O))) (instead highlighting their influence in the scene) it’s a sign that they’re no longer pushing in the interesting directions they once did. Perhaps that this record is so obviously looking back to the past is an indication of reflection, and in the future Eternity’s Pillars… might be seen as when the duo started digging through their foundations to piece together a new direction for the band. Whatever the case, I suspect whenever— if ever—we get their next full-length, at this point over half a decade since Pyroclasts, it will be a make-or-break moment in their discography.
3/5 Flaming Toilets ov Hell
Eternity’s Pillars b/w Raise the Chalice & Reverential is out now on Sub Pop Records.
