Sunn O)))
Dømkirke

THE REVIEW

Finally, after a few years (three since the collaboration with Boris), Mr. Drone Stephen O'Malley returns to offer music with his most famous group. The album in question, "Dømkirke," is a live recording from March 2007 made inside the gothic cathedral of Bergen in Norway (on the occasion of the Borealis festival) and incorporates the collaboration of the usual group members (Greg Anderson and Attila Csihar) with the addition of two novelties: the organ and brass by Steven "Stebmo" Moore (already working with the latest Earth and member, with Anderson, of Ascend) and the ultranoise electronics of the Norwegian Lasse Marhaug, which bring a significant variation in the standard of the American band.

First track, first surprise: "Why Dost Thou Hide Thyself in Clouds?" completely dispenses with the guitars and makes room for the clean and medieval-sounding voice of Attila Csihar, who accompanies the haunting organ (the one from the cathedral) of Stebmo, blending into a song with a mystical and religious flavor, mixing sounds reminiscent of Gregorian chants and Tibetan choirs. The subsequent ""Cannon" settles, instead, on more proper Drone grounds: expanded and torn guitars and Stebmo who "dronizes" the sound of the trombone, harmonizing it with the guitar distortions of O'Malley and Anderson. In the following compositions, the music of our hooded friends merges with Marhaug's electronics (which, I recall, hails from the European power noise scene) that, at times (especially in the concluding "Masks The Ætmospheres", which represents a kind of compendium of the sonic intuitions present in the previous tracks) almost takes over, clashing, on one side, with the feedback wall of O'Malley's guitar and Anderson's bass and, on the other, with Csihar's voice, never so divided between clean parts, growls, effects, laughter, and eerie noises.

With "Dømkirke", therefore, Sunn O))) reintroduce themselves to the public with a mature and structured display of Drone music, less metallic than the previous "Black One" and less extremist than the monolith "White2", yet always very dark and magmatic, ideally transitioning from the alien and spatial lows of their beginnings to a drone/black bastardized with foreign elements (brass, organs, and electronics) much more linked to the heaviness and concreteness of the earth's innards, with four lengthy compositions that, once again, can represent a (although frightening) soundtrack for meditation: enlightenment through noise!

Last notes: in stores, "Dømkirke" is presented as a double LP of blue color and higher gram weight, the cover was designed by Tanja "Aghast" Stene, a famous illustrator of black metal artwork (among others, Ulver and Darkthrone) and musician at the Cold Meat Industry, almost sealing even more the "pact" between the Americans and a certain part of the Norwegian black scene.