Joe Hagan on Sunn O)))

"Novelist and heavy-metal aficionado John Wray, author of Lowboy, once described being bludgeoned by metal avatars Sunn O))) as 'somehow more meditative than violent. The overall experience was not unlike listening to an Indian raga in the middle of an earthquake.' … Apparently there’s something about a global financial meltdown that calls for a curative blast of palette-cleansing noise. Witness … inveterate musical anthropologist David Byrne spotted, with earplugs, attending a Sunn O))) concert. He’s a fan. … The two members of Sunn O))) (pronounced simply 'sun' and named for a brand of amplifier) are big Miles Davis fans. Not that you’d necessarily hear the influence in their music. The image on the cover of their just-released album, Monoliths & Dimensions, features a Richard Serra painting from 1999, an image that looks like a big black hole entitled 'out-of-round X.' That gets the sound about right: overwhelming and too big to wrap your ears around. Onstage, Sunn O))) play bowel-shaking chords painstakingly slowly for two hours while wearing druid robes amid the ubiquitous fog. … It’s not unfunny, but it’s also riveting" ("Let There Be Doom," New York, 5/18/09).