The beautiful unease: A review of sunn O))) latest release

Sunn O)))’s latest release feels like a call to the masses—a literal invitation to gather around and just listen quietly. After years of high-profile collaborations with all sorts of guest artists, founders Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson are back to being a duo, and you can really feel that shift. It’s not just the lineup that’s been stripped back; the sound is, too. There’s a clarity here that reminds me of their early days, but it feels more deliberate now, as if they’ve spent decades researching the perfect note and studying exactly how long a single vibration can hang in the air before fading away.

The album unfolds with an agonising slowness, it puts you in this state of constant anticipation, waiting for a resolution or a moment that never quite arrives. Honestly, I found it pretty uncomfortable. You can really feel this on the 18-minute opener, “XXANN.” It starts with this hypnotic, mesmerizing intro that builds up so much expectation that, until the guitars finally kick in, the tension is almost physical. It’s a bold move that really tests your patience and forces you to sit with the silence between the sounds. It was definitely a challenge for me.

When the guitar notes finally do show up, it doesn’t feel like a “song” in the traditional sense—it’s more like a bath of vibration. The tempo is so glacial that it doesn’t leave you any room to think; it just guides you into this deep, hearty resonance. There’s a raw, organic quality to it, almost like what you’d hear if you handed a guitar to a forest. At first, the notes might seem totally detached from each other, but they’re actually part of a massive, interconnected system. Adding to that outdoor feeling are field recordings of rain, which remind you of the rural setting where they recorded this and how much our environment changes how we hear things.

At the end of the day, this album feels like a big question mark aimed at how we perceive the world. It forces you to choose: does this slow, unfolding sound bring bliss to your soul, or does the uncertainty of not knowing what’s coming next just leave you feeling restless? Whether this is your genre or not, the experience is undeniable. While a lot of people find a meditative peace in this kind of drone, I definitely leaned toward the discomfort—I was anchored in the heavy, beautiful unease of the unknown.

Tracklist

1. XXANN
2. Does Anyone Hear Like Venom?
3. Butch’s Guns
4. Mindrolling
5. Everett Moses
6. Glory Black