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Listeners who followed the Northwest trio SUMAC down the tangled briar of mathematical riffs and hypnotic battery on The Deal or through the unfettered eruptions and methodical dissonance of What One Becomes are aware that SUMAC eschews the conventional balladry typically associated with odes to our spiritual connectedness. Saccharine sweetness or fatalistic tales of unrequited affection are nowhere to be found on third full-length album, 2018's Love In Shadow.
Over the album's hour-plus length, the band employs minimal tools to achieve a maximum overview of visceral passions. Yet while popular music puts an emphasis on conveying moods through well-tread tropes, cultural signifiers, and deeply ingrained associations between tempo, texture, melody and their respective emotional resonance, SUMAC approach their music with the tactile immediacy of abstract expressionists. The beauty is not in the content, but in the form. Across 4 protracted songs, guitarist and vocalist Aaron Turner (Old Man Gloom, Mamiffer, ISIS) and his cohorts – Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists, Erosion) on drums and Brian Cook (Russian Circles) on bass – interlace and mangle sounds from their instruments in a sonic homage to both the innate warmth of human magnetism and the cold realities of corrupted love – jealousy, obsession, perversion, addiction.
Kurt Ballou recorded the album live with the goal of minimal overdubs or fixes over 5 days at Robert Lang Studios in Shoreline, WA. The result is an album that sounds more alive and human than the common computer grid-built mechanically perfect metal record.
Over the album's hour-plus length, the band employs minimal tools to achieve a maximum overview of visceral passions. Yet while popular music puts an emphasis on conveying moods through well-tread tropes, cultural signifiers, and deeply ingrained associations between tempo, texture, melody and their respective emotional resonance, SUMAC approach their music with the tactile immediacy of abstract expressionists. The beauty is not in the content, but in the form. Across 4 protracted songs, guitarist and vocalist Aaron Turner (Old Man Gloom, Mamiffer, ISIS) and his cohorts – Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists, Erosion) on drums and Brian Cook (Russian Circles) on bass – interlace and mangle sounds from their instruments in a sonic homage to both the innate warmth of human magnetism and the cold realities of corrupted love – jealousy, obsession, perversion, addiction.
Kurt Ballou recorded the album live with the goal of minimal overdubs or fixes over 5 days at Robert Lang Studios in Shoreline, WA. The result is an album that sounds more alive and human than the common computer grid-built mechanically perfect metal record.