brian cook

Album Review: Sumac – “Love in Shadow”

Jon1 Comment

Sumac - Love In Shadow

The music of Sumac seems to always exist in states of perpetual construction and deconstruction. On a macro level, the trio of Aaron Turner, Nick Yacyshyn and Brian Cook frequently conjure up some truly giant apocalypses. And yet on a micro level, there’s all kinds of jagged and uneven sonic qualities brought to the surface that create a texture of crumbling brittleness. Picture a skyscraper heavily damaged, still standing but with huge swaths of rebar exposed. In this metaphor Love in Shadow, Sumac’s most recent 2018 album, tries to patch up the crumbling sections without losing its distinctiveness.   Continue reading →

Album Review: Sumac – “What One Becomes”

Josh5 Comments

Sumac - What One Becomes

On second full length What One Becomes, Sumac does more than just offer up the standard sophomore release. What they do is expand on the near psychotic levels of dense aggression present on debut The Deal as well as play more like a unified giant in a way that same album hinted at. Their debut was astounding, no doubting that, but here it’s as if these three tap into the same brainwave. They play off one another extraordinarily well and while it’s only a five track album it is most definitely a long player. With no track shorter than nine minutes the band take full advantage of being able to stretch out completely. Continue reading →

Album Review: Sumac – “The Deal”

joylkmus2 Comments

sumac

As I was reading about metal supergroup Sumac’s new debut album, The Deal, I was thinking: we often reduce what a band sounds like to a mere math problem. There’s one member who’s also in a hardcore band, one who used to be in a sludge band, and one in a doom metal band. And, as press releases often breathlessly claim, the band they’re all in together sounds like a mixture of those styles. Groundbreaking! So what happens when your math problem consists of Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom), Brian Cook (Russian Circles, These Arms Are Snakes), and Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists)? Does the proven skill of the combined musicians ensure that the music will be greater than the sum of its parts? Continue reading →