With their positivity, euphoria and transcendence, the group open up a portal for converts to metal, turning it into high artThe decade in music: Beyoncé’s labour of liberationBBC 6 Music ushered in
Halloween this year with a gloriously autumnal live session by Sunn O))). On her mid-morning prime-time show the next day, Mary Anne Hobbs played a reverberant section of their 30-minute drone metal track Troubled Air, and introduced the band to her large audience as the “overlords of experimental metal”t. Using a dizzyingly large backline at Maida Vale studios, they summoned warm waves of overdriven guitar noise, complemented by a heavenly swell of trombone, which crashed up against current hyped playlist hopefuls and canonical heavyweights including Depeche Mode, Missy Elliott and Tom Waits.
The station presented this bit of curation as shocking (“Yes, you read that right!”) and, in fairness, the grimacing and becowled duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson aren’t the first names that spring to mind when you think of daytime radio. Their “songs” often stretch to 20 minutes or more, they’re called things like Big Church (Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért) or A Shaving of the Horn That Speared You, and consist mainly of a tidal wave of cabinet-shaking guitar drone and teeth-vibrating feedback. Yet they are the most influential metal group of the decade.