Sumac – “Two Beasts”
A couple of months ago, the experimental metal power trio Sumac released their new album May You Be Held. That album gave them plenty of room to expand on their heavy, doomy, free-wandering sound; the title track, for instance, is 20 minutes long. But Sumac were not done wandering. Yesterday, they came out with another new track, and this one lasts 19 minutes.
Sumac’s new song is called “Two Beasts,” and they’ve released it as part of the Sub Pop Singles Club. (The song is so long that Sub Pop had to split it into two halves, one for each side of the record.) The track starts out with huge, crashing chords, and it returns to thunderous riffage whenever it feels right. But over the course of the song, the band also leans in improvisatory directions, toward drone or free jazz.
The members of Sumac are old hands at this. Frontman Aaron Turner used to run Hydra Head Records and lead shoegaze-metal titans Isis, and he still fronts the way-out supergroup Old Man Gloom. Sumac finds him working with Russian Circles bassist Brian Cook and Baptists drummer Nick Yacyshyn. The trio has put out four albums in the past five years, and they seem to have their whole identity figured out. Check out “Two Beasts” below.
You can buy “Two Beasts” and the rest of this year’s Sub Pop Singles Club entries at Bandcamp.