At the forefront of a then new strain of Metal simply coined Doom, bands like Earth, outings by Boris, and the Northwest trio of SUNN O))) were fashioning a gargantuan and glacial sound in the late 90s to early 2000s. These bands themselves inspired by the earliest manifestations of the sound from the late 80s to early 1990s, its developmental phase heard in the music of Pentagram, Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, and Trouble. While bearing cultural associations with the recent Post-Black Metal explosion, as detailed in Brad Sanders' "Untrue And International: Living in a Post-Black Metal World", for The Quietus, the offshoot of Doom in the 1990s remains it's own cloistered musical corner of that world. Touching on Doom within the larger context, Sanders' article acts as an opening unto the dark passageways of contemporary Metal's multitude of stylistic representations. These sounds further showcased in the past half-decade of The Quietus' Columnus Metallicus showcase of excellent curation, dominantly issued through all things Metal-and-beyond labels like, Hydrahead, Ipecac, Deathwish, Sargent House, Profound Lore, Season of Mist, Roadburn, Flenser, Neurot and Relapse. Seven years have elapsed since Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson's SUNN O))) performed here in Seattle, they return to The Showbox this month on a series of west coast dates in support of their most recent tectonic slab of sound, "Life Metal", and forthcoming companion album, "Pryoclasts". While their presence on the west coast as a live, touring band has been scarce in recent years, they have entered into one of the most prolific collaborative phases the band has seen to date. Not only releasing the "Terrestrials" with legendary experimental Norwegian band, Ulver, they produced an album with the late 20th century singularity known as Scott Walker on "Soused". The timing of the latter particularly fortuitous, as just this year, the life of this brilliant maverick came to an end, “Pop's Great Adventurer: How Scott Walker Reached the Heart of Darkness”. In the midst of this all, somehow finding time and resources to contributing to Jóhann Jóhannsson's pounding, sensory-fraying work with Randall Dunn, on "Cosmatos’s Mock-1980s Oddball Nerd Fantasy Yarn", score for "Mandy" in 2018. This seemingly boundless well of musical and thematic inspiration plumbed in their interview with The Quietus, "Inspiration From Above and Below: The Strange World Of... SUNN O)))", and to even greater depths, for The Wire's April 2009 issue. Complete transcripts of the associated interviews with both Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson are further enhanced by SUNN O)))'s regular contributing members; Mayhem's vocal leviathan Attila Csihar, Seattle electric violin virtuoso Eyvind Kang, electronic and experimental vocalist Jessika Kenney, and Australia's all around sonic renaissance man, Oren Ambarchi.
Returning to the Northwest with much greater frequency, Sacred Bones label artist Uniform will be here for the second occasion this year following their winter tour with experimental Metal band, The Body. Hot on the heels of last year's "The Long Walk", a new collaborative album, "Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back" arrives this month. The furious soundscape of their third album (and this newest in a set of collaborations with The Body), runs the gamut of a dissonant molasses crawl, passages of substantial lurching weight, and bludgeoning epileptic hysteria. Fitting then that The Quietus' "Killing It In America: An Interview With Uniform", touches on the American genre author, and that this spastic, guttural album is inspired by a dystopic, authoritarian short story by Stephen King. In the way of their collaborators, there are few acts that fully embody the term Experimental Metal, quite to the extent of The Body. Through a small abundance of solo and collaborative albums both with Uniform, a set of blistering noise-thrash intersections with Full of Hell, and their recent "Ascending A Mountain Of Heavy Light", The Body have carved out a corpus of sounds at the vanguard of the genre's evolution. The Quietus' "Prepare For The Worst: Facing The Apocalypse With The Body" describes the doom-full trajectory that has led to this year's, "I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer". With Uniform for a night at Neumos, Japanese heavy rockers, Boris make their semi-annual return to the west with a string of Us tour dates. Showing no signs of a sedentary codification of their sound, or a deceleration of their recording or touring schedule, "For Boris, Heavy is a State of Being". Rumored at the time to be their swansong, after almost 25 years of recording and endless activity, 2017's "Dear" for Sargent House instead generated nearly three albums of vital new material. Born from this precipice, they return this fall with a new album, "LφVE & EVφL" as well as a set of domestic LP reissues for Jack White's Third Man Records in October.
Though not likely to ascend to the heights of 2013's world tour wherein they played the totality of their magisterial opus "Flood", alongside a second night of "All-Time Classics", the "LφVE & EVφL" tour still promises an evening of the heart-of-the-sun intensity Boris are known to deliver live. The most recent in a decade of semiannual live events which has seen them manifest an ever-mutating mix of Doom Metal, Heavy Psych, warped J-Pop, willfully dysfunctional Indie Rock, and even their own thrilling take on Dream Pop and Shoegaze. The latter we first glimpsed on their "Japanese Heavy Rock Hits" 7" series, which was then refined on "Attention Please", from which they then pivoted to the guttural Psyche assault of "Heavy Rocks". This prolific inundation culminating in the tri-album recording release of late 2011, topped by their upbeat pop-assault of the generically titled, "New Album". Following this deluge was the more atmospheric Metal-oriented tour album "Präparat" and the mainstream riffs of 2014's "Noise", with it's pronounced college-rock sensibilities. The band themselves perceive this stylistic shift as just another stage in their assimilation of influences towards an all-inclusive Boris sound, in interview for The Quietus the feedback-worshiping trio state, "Noise is Japanese Blues': An Interview with Boris". This summer's tour in anticipation of the new album for Third Man Records, marks a return to the territory the band carved out with 2005's "Pink", and the brand of lyrical guitar squall of collaborator Michio Kurihara heard on the companion album "Rainbow". Typical of the abundant recording sessions which have produced each album, the recent domestic reissue of "Pink" features a previously unreleased companion album of "Forbidden Songs". Comprising overflow from this era that ended up on the cutting room floor, their interview for Invisible Oranges delves into this phase of high production and new inspirations. The March 2016 issue of The Wire recaps the trio's decades-long recording and touring process, which brings them back into contact with legendary noise extremist Merzbow on the 150 minutes of new music appearing on the interchangeable double LP set, "Gensho". Its depths sounded by Masami Akita in his interview for The Quietus, "Razor Blades In The Dark: An Interview With Merzbow".
