On The Healer Sumac delivers a big bold stroke with a deafening yet subtly textured brush.
After a certain phase of evolution most genre designations become unavoidably imprecise and require a further specification by adding a word, changing an element of their name or combining it with other genres. That excercise becomes increasingly harder once the classification has already been beginning with New or Post for decades. Because in truth - isn’t it “Rather Old” or “Long Past Post” now?
Post-Metal key figure Aaron Turner (ex-Isis, Old Man Gloom) doesn’t even bother with musical questions like these and has become an abstract painter instead. As such he not only creates the cover artworks of his albums, but also their content.
The guitarist and singer’s group with drummer extraordinaire Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists) and Russian Circles-bass player Brian Cook has long established a trajectory moving further and further away from the brand of Post-Metal, which he helped to define in the first place, into a much more Experimental freeform approach. They even collaborated with Japanese Noise improvisation master Keiji Haino twice and that influence obviously shows. These guys have completely given up on caring even one bit about our dear established categories and listening habits.
On The Healer with its only four tracks in 80 minutes - two of them around 25 minutes each - Sumac concentrate on their massive trio sound, recruiting only Turner’s wife Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer) for some contributions on organ and tapes. All the while they’re moving their music further than ever into a context, where it simply cannot be measured or judged applying units of Metal anymore.
Yes, of course the bass and guitar sounds are as brutal as a pedicure with a cheese grater. There are riffs which pummel you back into the womb and back through time into the Stone Age. And with each and every gurgling growling scream you expect bloody chunks of Turner’s lungs to be spewn out with it.
All this is seriously heavy shit, but it’s seldom applied in a traditional way. The structures, the pace and scale are not what normally happens when you get together with your buddies to squeaze out a bunch of Metal bangers. The pure sound of the guitar, including involuntary feedbacks, other sidetones like dirty scratches on a string or clacking on the pick-ups and the rustling and buzzing of the amp, all that is much more important than the actual riffs. Or at least Sumac want us to think that. Turner’s commitment to the Ambient noises of his instrument seems to outdo even that of his crucial influence Justin Broadrick. Talking of the Godflesh mastermind one must also notice that Brian Cook’s bass tone is certainly paying tribute to G.C. Green big time. Just the right flavour of gnarled brutality. Just listen to minute three of “Yellow Dawn”! Gives me resting stank face for days.
As a textural experience The Healer plays in the league of Sunn O))), but the overall mission of Sumac in comparison feels less straight-forward than their peers’ Drone Metal-concept. However, they certainly have in common that they rather seem like aural painters filling the empty spaces of the recording medium than mere musicians just playing a song. Of course Sumac’s colours include complex progressive rhythmic arrangements, chaotic freak-outs, crawling Death Doom, shredded solos, even psychedelic tones and Kayo Dot style almost-Darkjazz, but all those things can be interrupted and turned upside down at any given moment.
Ultimately most of what Sumac is doing here either appears as an abstract deconstruction of Metal or a heightened exaggeration. The listener is only asked for time – and to be free from giddiness while being tossed around between those poles.
If this is you, get in! You should absolutely love how far the trio pushes the extremes this time. And if not - The Healer paradoxically might make you sick. Still worth it though, if you ask me.
