My cellular connection faded with the setting sun on Saturday, and mist hovered in the crisp air over the hills of rural Tennessee as I made the roughly 86-mile drive to The Caverns in Pelham, Tenn. All of these conditions helped me unplug from my daily responsibilities back in Nashville — good preparation for heading underground, drawn by the dark magnetism of titans of drone Sunn O))). The ride from the parking lot to the venue on a shuttle bus (it appeared to be a hand-me-down from a public school or a county jail) sealed the deal. Careening down a narrow and curvy road off the beaten path gave those aboard little choice but to leave the outside world behind.
This show was originally planned with an opener: Papa M, aka Slint guitarist and popular indie-rock utility man David Pajo. Unfortunately, he was hospitalized a few days earlier during the tour’s stop in Chicago, and he’s been diagnosed with a perforated ulcer and a bacterial infection. Per an Instagram post, he’s in good spirits and hopes to be back on the tour soon, but he wasn’t able to make it to The Caverns. This meant that Saturday’s show would be an encounter with Sunn O))) alone, revolving around Life Metal, their latest album of power ambient burners.
As I made my way through the venue’s grand entrance, I spotted grizzled old-school heshers clad head-to-toe in black denim as well as fresh-faced, vibrantly dressed millennials. For a while, there was ample elbow room, but the space (whose capacity is around 1,000) began to feel pretty cozy by the time the band took the stage.
Overall, that might have led to the group dialing back their carefully crafted mystique a notch or two. All the same, there was a gracious roar of applause as the robed members of Sunn O)))’s touring ensemble appeared. Machine-made fog billowed across the fortress-like wall of amps (mostly Sunn brand, though close inspection of our photog’s pics reveals a few Ampegs in the mix) that formed an ominous, glowing backdrop.
The core duo of dueling guitarists Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley stood front and center, with longtime touring members Steve Moore and Tos Nieuwenhuizen manning a pair of analog synthesizers behind them. Silkworm bassist Tim Midyett, the only one of Sunn O)))’s collaborators on Life Metal to play that night, took up his bass stage right. Notably absent was frequent touring vocalist Attila Csihar; that led to the expectation (which turned out to be correct) that this performance was to be a largely instrumental affair.
Soon, the familiar sonic burn of swelling guitar feedback began to fill the room. The amps’ volume was dialed so high that the instruments essentially played themselves for a good 10 minutes, before the band struck the first notes of Life Metal closer “Novae.” Instead of the track’s midsong pipe-organ-enhanced drone, we got a jazzy interlude by way of a trombone solo from Moore. It slowed and became a hum, melted into the overdriven deluge of guitar fuzz that seemed to consume the room. As if this spine-tingling, body-shaking immersion weren’t narcotic enough, cannabis enthusiasts seemed to be burning offerings in honor of the beloved stoner holiday 4/20 throughout the space, with puffs of smoke conveniently masked by the mass of fog trapped in the cave.
Sunn O))) taps into the jugular of heavy metal’s fixation on the occult, and playing on the mystique of darkness was part of what lured the crowd into this cave to begin with. But what we got once we were down below was a warm, ritualistic, ear-bleeding celebration of light. As the band drifted into Life Metal’s “Troubled Light,” the full-range blast of overblown frequencies — from rumbling lows to piercing highs — made it almost impossible to think of anything else. O'Malley, Anderson and their compatriots are amp whisperers, and they wrangled the drone with seasoned hands, revealing the spectral elegance of the beast they’d unleashed.
The resonant, expansive riffs crackled, fizzed, shimmered, groaned and at times crumbled with the power of a glacial avalanche, distilling an inimitable essence from their monolithic structures by eliminating any and all nonessential features to dial in sound you could feel. There were no sudden movements, and chords changed at an exaggeratedly unhurried pace. For nearly two hours, the flow of time seemed to be suspended. A collective tremor ran through the room during a rare moment when O’Malley and Anderson synced up, letting their guitars chime in unison. Is it the sound of the Earth vibrating in harmony with the universe? Maybe or maybe not, but it’s definitely one of the most powerful, visceral sounds in popular music.
There was a faint rattle of percussion that I couldn’t trace — it could’ve been one of my sinus cavities, honestly — as sonic shapes crystallized from and dissolved into a gorgeous discord. Eventually, the band took a bow and exited the stage, but the crowd didn’t seem interested in going anywhere. The group returned for an encore, an additional 25 minutes or so of bone-shaking ecstasy before bidding farewell for good. We were left dazed but rejuvenated, trying to shake the hum from our heads. When I emerged from the cave and entered the darkness of the night, it seemed somehow brighter than the all-consuming blackness that night can be.
