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Rating: OK OK I know... I'm a lunatic... and I'm proud of it.
After two Sunn concerts practically one after the other, it took me at least ten days for my ear infection to pass and to reorganize a bit of the vast, mind-blowing memory material regarding this spectacular event. I had known since 2005 that the Sunn would land with the new year here for us poor Italian posers and outcasts, but who would have expected such a remarkable tour, with even the seminal Earth acting as the opening band (a bit grotesque since the founding fathers of this rancid oppressive sound are precisely them!!?)... so the time passed, and the rising craving led me to decide on yet another madness.
Not just one but two Sunn concerts with Earth lie ahead of me... and when will I ever get to see them again in the future??? Well, the fact is that I decided, it doesn't matter if I have to go alone, at most I'll get high like a dog and make new acquaintances...
I set aside something like 100 euros in a month, daily praying not to touch them nor spend them... "those are for the Sunn concert" is the morning prayer... and meanwhile, I spread the word of perdition by announcing that I would also go to see the concert in Florence, at the Flog.
It's worth noting that, being from Ravenna, almost no one paid me any mind since all the interested parties already knew that our guys would also play at the Bronson, leaving me high and dry.... but then came the turning-point phone call: that idiot Nigolas and his little brother Dimi at the last moment told me they are in, and at the very last moment, Aldo and Allo also joined. It's done!!
With my car, we set off towards Florence through Mugello... a peaceful journey, ambient music all the way, speeding down the highway, stopping at an Autogrill, and the usual nonsense... it takes us a while to find Flog, but eventually, we are directed to the Poggetto neighborhood, and wandering aimlessly, we find it almost by chance (it's always like this...). As soon as I arrive in front of the Flog, I meet one of my "concert buddies," that is, someone I've met at other random dates throughout Italy with whom I had arranged months before to "see the Sunn, maybe in Milan..."; we greet each other fraternally, and he hastily informs me that the group's booth is already set up and it's urgent to spend as much as possible on limited merchandise... I don't need to be told twice and, after paying 13 euros for entry, I rush there, where a lovely dark-haired metalhead is running the stall, trying to act aloof with every customer who, besides handing over some cash, maybe also engages in aesthetic-sexual digressions... I approach confidently and snag 2 copies of the SunnO))/Earth split, gold vinyl limited to 666 copies (one I'll resell on eBay, like a good scavenger, in a couple of years...), the Xasthur/Leviathan split CD (I hate BM), as well as the tour shirt with the mephitic gnome on the front and the wall of amplifiers on the back. I’m fully satisfied and pay no mind to the aforementioned girl.
Thus, I enter the Flog, and already in the dim light, I see some shady individuals dressed in black, and it scares me... I only calm down when I find the others, in front of the stage, contemplating the Great Wall of Sunn and all the paraphernalia these madmen bring along—even two smoke machines!! The pre-concert chatter begins, and a guy approaches me, complimenting me on my Swans shirt, rightly claiming they are one of the best live bands ever and lamenting that he saw them, and I didn't, and now I never will... what a shame... meanwhile, a Texan trucker arrives on stage, slightly chubby with almost curled mustache, and begins to give voice to his guitar. I find myself facing Dylan Carlson, who is soon joined by his bandmates (a bassist, drummer Adrienne, and an unexpected trombonist), and they begin their set, which literally catapults the audience into another dimension. This new incarnation of Earth really makes a difference, and compared to the glorious past, Dylan Carlson certainly has nothing to envy; the jagged and salty sinuosity of his drone guitar notes are laden with pathos between a powerfully slowed rhythm section and the dark and rough brass sound, filtered through various effects (almost like a series of gusts of wind at times...).
The music is absolutely "pronounced," the aura it emits is total and seems to evoke unspoiled and distant landscapes, as if suspended in space admiring in silence the density of Uranus's atmosphere, in a limbo where time and space are annulled, yet one can still observe in the immense vastness of the void a vulture circling, solitary, in search of rotting food... I stand in front of Carlson's amp for the entire concert, emerging happy and stunned, and towards the end (I think they were doing "Railford") I notice a couple of beards mingling with the audience: it's O'Malley and Anderson, to whom I promptly renew my greetings and respects.
I head to the bar and find the others enthusiastically sipping a large beer, nick a sip from them, and return to my spot in the front row; soon, the aforementioned beards arrive on stage along with a cowboy to set up a soundcheck: O'Malley connects the guitar (the one he usually uses when playing with Khan8) to a rundown tube amp (then removed ?!?!), which begins to crackle amid the amused cries of the audience... ahahaha, what trash, GREAT!! Then he approaches his pedals, quickly convinced of their good functioning, and the smoke machines also start to work, briefly entertaining an increasingly curious and impatient audience... puff puff puff puff and the stage is now enveloped in fog. Welcomed by some expressions of jubilation (mine), the SunnO)) arrive wearing their black robes: this incarnation of Sunn includes the magnificent duo O'Malley/Anderson + Tos Nieuwenhuizen (a valiant one, as you will know later...) + a not quite defined, and perhaps a bit unnecessary, bass-player (who did nothing but run his hand over the frets, as the sound was at maximum, blessing the audience with the other hand... maybe a certain Mark Deutrom..). The legendary "Hall-O))-ween", "NNO))", "Black Wedding", and perhaps other compositions typical of the early Sunn sound, which I prefer, were chained to each other and fused into a nightmarish pre-Apocalypse sound chaos: a mighty, albeit sparse and minimal, sonic wind emanating from the wall of amps at a stratospheric volume; the guru-like poses are all there, especially those of Anderson, who this round seems to me the true stage guru: he waves his golden Les Paul mightily as if it were a relic from a time that was, almost as if it were an extension of him, his hands come together and raise to the sky in a gesture of defiance. Then arrives a shady and sinister figure with a microphone in tow: it's Xasthur/Malefic, a famed black metal dog with an acidic and pestilential voice.... the Sunn set now intensifies with Malefic screaming as if he were an actual hellhound unleashed from infernal reins to storm unsuspecting humanity.
Meanwhile Nigola, Dimi, and I are lost in our mental chaos made of idiocy, fun, and sheer beastliness... we meet a young guy with his young partner, and I compliment him on his Boris shirt, and unbelievably!!, he has CONFETTI (it was indeed Shrove Thursday...), so we start literally throwing them in Xasthur's face, who, until the end of the concert, did nothing but mumble incomprehensible sentences, cry (!!!), and drool blackish liquid (excellent!!)!!! Even if he wasn't very happy, for me, the confetti was the most sublime part of the concert!! A bit less enjoyable was enduring the madman's screams until the end when the sweetness of silence spread through the air with grace and fullness never contemplated elsewhere...
Return trip to Ravenna from a nightmare: as if we hadn't had enough, in Mugello we were awaited by rain, snow, frost, fog, and loneliness... my own, the only survivor forced to drive home... I rebelled against this state of things, threatening to go off the road if someone didn’t take over immediately; Allo volunteered, an unexpected martyr at 3:30 in the morning, so I could blaze up and then fall into a slumber until we arrived home... where, incidentally, our guys play the following Saturday.
Thus, here I am again at the start: in less than 48 hours, I'm elated again and ready for another two-plus hours of cerebral devastation!!! Bronson, a small venue adjacent to the Madonna dell'Albero circle (a tiny hamlet just outside Ravenna), a place of perdition for the rowdy Ravenna nights with the scent of electro-pop, Clash, dance-hall various genres + underground concerts of certain relevance and often very stimulating... I myself organize concerts and must say that with Bronson I've already found myself in a state of sound competition (sound in the sense that we try not to pull each other's hair...) due to a consonance of common musical tastes that brought us to the same wavelength in organizing events and evenings... but on the other hand just agreeing harmoniously makes everyone happy. So when I found out they were doing SunnO))+Earth there... well, first I rejoiced, then I worried: how can they do this concert without waking up half the town, while the other half storms the venue, maybe in the throes of a mystical crisis??? In my opinion, the cops are coming, was one of my thoughts... but then in the end they didn't!!!
At 9, Davide, a partner in a thousand adventures, calls me, ecstatically hard because this year the Sunn are playing behind his house (last year he also came to Nurnberg..), and urges me to hurry. Earth is about to start... But I'm busy, I have to bring along a friend I'm really infatuated with, and I want to take her to see the Sunn (as if to say it's all or nothing!!!!). I arrive with her around 9:30 and Earth has already started playing... too bad that the Bronson stage is really sunken at the end of the room, so with all the people there already with Earth, you could see little and nothing... but I care about the sound, as pristine and magical as always... I revel in those decadent notes (the wonderful "A plague of Angel", from the split SunnO))/Earth on golden vinyl!!! on sale at the booth and definitively sold out that evening...), while Serena looks at me a little skeptical, but still amused. Around, I note shirts of Judas Iscariot, Burzum, Neurosis, etc.; I greet the legendary Seldon Hunt who I met a year before at the ISIS concert in Bologna... he is the tallest person I've ever had the pleasure of conversing with.. now he is touring with O'Malla and company, he remembered me and I promise to send him the Corrupted/Cripple Bastards split in Australia again, as he's missing it... if any of you guys have an extra copy, please contact me and sell it to me, I only have one and on eBay, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find...
I follow Serena in and out, not wanting to leave her alone in this valley of crazies, I blaze up and sip a beer while waiting, along with everyone else, for our guys to appear and annihilate us, something which promptly unfolds before my disbelieving eyes: the fog from the smoke machines at the Bronson makes the environment even darker and stagnant, the atmosphere truly oppressive.... I can’t see a thing, having been left behind this round, and there being an outrageous crowd in the front rows with incredulously seated or lying down people, the smoke machines running at full throttle, and only when I approach the bathroom, which is near the stage, do I see the sinister silhouette of O'Malley kneeling, almost praying and beating his chest... The incommensurability between Sunn and the majority of the Bronson attendees quickly becomes evident: apart from the large audience, of whom I knew a good 50%, close to the stage, it’s hilarious to see the frightened, incredulous faces of the bartenders, almost degenerate angels forced to serve drinks to Satan himself, the bouncers fuming because of the vibrations, who didn’t feel like returning to patrol to catch any cigarettes among the crowd, preferring to stay at the door... it peaks towards the end: outside, where I go to have a smoke, I see the Bronson shaking, and I think of the elders of the Madonna circle, if there were any left inside... I find friends and acquaintances exhausted but positively struck ("Never seen anything like this.."), on re-entering I have a laugh noting people literally befuddled with their faces to the wall, unable even to get up for a drink!!!
The venue's speakers howl, everything is at maximum power, my ears, like those of the other attendees, are incandescent and seem to threaten permanent deafness.... the epilogue is triumphant, with never too many praises and hails!!! I also report Enrico's review, a dear friend from Bagnacavallo, who saw SunnO))+Earth+An albatross in Barcelona... we exchanged views via email... if you haven’t shot up 2 flacons of dexamyl reading up to here, continue reading, friends.... until next time:)
"-An albatross: pretty cool, but fatally out of place and snubbed by the crowd. I was the only one dancing, the only one who knew the songs, me and a 20-year-old screamo-loving Catalan guy. I expected something a pun bit more devastating, but I was still satisfied. Quite shocked by the concert length, even 35 minutes. Some of my doubts might be due to the fact they were mostly playing new songs... Rock and roll stage presence beyond expression, the singer seemed like Alice Cooper... -Earth: Beautiful, beautiful, 55 minutes 4 songs, their classic drone with an unusual Morricone-esque inflection, a drum reminiscent of Godflesh, although not electronic, and finally an unusual but fascinating blend of tradition and niche sounds... Had I not been dead tired, I would have enjoyed them more. Intense, and above all notable for successfully inserting a palpable melancholic streak into a drone-based sound. -Sunn. I was shocked to see so many people, like 400 people. I couldn't believe Sunn have become so famous, with that harsh sound... Burzum shirts and metalheads thrilled everywhere, but also people dressed poshly (better than metalheads), all of them thrilled. 1 song for 67 minutes. Smoke everywhere and a rehearsed stage presence, with slow, crystallized movements, gestures of incitement to the audience, raised fists and such, reminiscent of a sect ritual, and truly overpowering sound. Towards the end, I got a bit bored, maybe because this useless super black metal vocalist, perhaps Xhastur, arrived after 25 minutes and kept making the same maddening scream for too long. The music was mostly ok though. More than anything, when everything suddenly stopped, I realized how deeply they managed to engulf me, even though I was barely following in the end... The silence was disorienting. People were asking for my opinions, and I said I mostly came for a friendship duty and for An albatross, that Sunn never fully convince me but it's a fact they are monstrously personal even at the cost of falling into the ridiculous and recording some unnecessary material, something I can't say of many bands I like, but then again, I'm honest and objective."
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