SUNROT

Passages

Prosthetic
rating icon 7 / 10

Track listing:

01. Death Knell
02. The First Wound (feat. Dylan Walker)
03. Sleep (feat. Brandon Hill)
04. Untethered
05. Ra


As we swivel and writhe amid this era of bad vibes and mental injury, extreme music can still be relied upon to reflect our horror and misery back at us. Two years ago, SUNROT released one of the most crushing and emotionally ruinous sludge metal albums of all time. It was called "The Unfailing Rope" and it hurt, like a rotten tooth or a shattered eye socket. No light escaped from this New Jersey quintet's unique take on abominable, droning, noise rock: just desperation, desolation and hate. Just what the nihilistic doctor ordered, in other words.

Now SUNROT are apparently hell-bent on taking us even deeper into their twisted world of no hope. With only five songs and a total running time of 16 minutes, "Passages" might seem like a stunted stopgap, but this thing picks up where "The Unfailing Rope" left off and, amazingly, is even more disgusting and surreal. For those teetering on the edge, this could be the final push.

We can tell a lot about a band from the company they keep. On the last album's evidence, SUNROT are already identifiable as mad-eyed misanthropes, and the presence of FULL OF HELL's Dylan Walker on "The First Wound" comes as no real surprise. Following on from two-minute, dark ambient intro "Death Knell", Walker's cameo is as unhinged and hostile as fans of his band will be expecting, and he adds color and depth to SUNROT's otherwise monochrome machinations. The song begins with a sparse and grubby riff that lurches into life, like a reanimated dinosaur on the warpath, with frontman Lex Santiago trading purulent screams with Walker, in the midst of a spluttering, scattershot shower of bilious noise.

Picking up pace as it hurtles towards a bloody climax, "The First Wound" is brilliantly hideous. Next, SUNROT unveil another guest: Brandon Hill, vocalist with Portland crossover crew STRESS TEST, who brings strangeness and warped charm to the freeform nightmare static of "Sleep". A more tangible blast of guitar abuse, "Untethered" switches from somnambulant post-rock drift to scabrous, off-kilter sludge, with rancid ghosts of shoegaze shimmering in the background. Played at a suitably life-threatening volume, it really does sound like reality caving in. Finally, "Ra" is an unsettling monologue set to more amorphous buzzing and hissing, and a deeply disquieting way to leave 'em wanting more.

Admittedly, "Passages" is over as soon as it begins, but SUNROT make every second count. The sound of frightened souls trying to claw their way out of the abyss is unmistakable. Keep it ugly, folks.

Author: Dom Lawson
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