Sunn O))) - Life Metal
Critic Score
Based on 20 reviews
2019 Ratings: #120 / 805
User Score
Based on 439 ratings
2019 Rank: #565
Liked by 29 people
April 26, 2019 / Release Date
LP / Format
Southern Lord / Label
Drone Metal / Genre
Sign In to rate and review

CRITIC REVIEWS

90
musicOMH

Life Metal resonates in the surrounding air particles long after the last track concludes, and will reverberate in the minds of listeners longer still. A truly magnificent, very real, and ultimately restorative record.

90
No Ripcord

Calling Life Metal a great metal/rock/guitar album, ultimately, is a disservice: This is a sonic meditation channeled through humbuckers and hearts.

90
Exclaim!

Life Metal retains all the traits that make Sunn O))) who they are, yet intertwined with a spark of unmistakable vibrance that lifts the spirit, even in the midst of such abyssal depths.

90
Uncut

More mellifluous than menacing despite its formidable display of power, Life Metal may be the richest work in the band's 21-year-mission to reconfigure Tony Iommi-worthy riffage into a soundtrack for mindful meditation.

85
The 405

The sound on Life Metal is enrapturing, meditative and all-encompassing, but in a nourishing and enveloping way - an aural womb.

85
The Line of Best Fit

At its best, Life Metal taps into our psyches and rearranges the elements. Sunn O))) have become experts in their harsh and unmerciful take on expanding sound, slowing it to a glacial pace, and finally rearranging it again until it’s unrecognizable.

85
Spectrum Culture

Life Metal brims with the white-hot intensity of the duo’s early records, when the primacy of the distended riff overrode all concerns.

84
Pitchfork

The titanic drone metal duo returns with Steve Albini for an enormous, meticulous, back-to-basics album that shows just how compelling those basics can be.

80
Mojo

Even at moderate volume, parts of Life Metal may loosen your neighbours' guttering.

80
Q Magazine
It does thrillingly refine the group's electric explorations of numinous spaces both minuscule and gigantic.
80
Record Collector

Overflowing with cultural, mythological and artistic allusions and a prepossessing unrest, Life Metal is an album that insists upon provoking imaginative thought, and is sure to do more for your gut motility than any prune.

80
Kerrang!

Gloriously triumphant, weirdly exhilarating and entirely engrossing, Sunn O))) have created something genuinely brilliant here.

80
Loud and Quiet

Life Metal invokes a refreshing return to origin: the back-to-basics approach of a grizzled group in their parents’ garage, where they once rehearsed as spotty teens. All told, it sounds like they’ve found a new lease on life.

80
AllMusic

Life Metal is the dawning of a new phase for Sunn 0))), one that resonates with more power and complexity than anything in their catalog.

70
The Needle Drop

Life Metal is Sunn O)))'s best sounding album to date, though not their most adventurous.

70
Classic Rock
Uncompromisingly creative, it's an album designed with the absence of neighbours in mind.
60
PopMatters

Your reaction to Sunn O)))'s Life Metal will depend on whether you prefer a reminder of what Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley do so well, or wish that they were still unlocking new potential within what the band can be.

mickc
95

My wife hates it

exception
77

One of their better releases

WhatTheFunk
NR

Sunn O))) have the same concept since 1998. Despite all that the band has now predictable, their merit is that they having invented a musical concept, the drone metal. The two band members, Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, had both a fascinating idea and a deadly boredom. Their first albums are, in my opinion, absolute musical masterpieces and all the rest is deeply boring. What about their new work "Life Metal" ? If you like the big fat dirty sounds of guitars amplified by ... read more

Spellling
87

I love almost everything on here baby

Rolls
81

I have no idea why I would like 10+ minutes of droning guitar noise more than another 10+ minutes of droning guitar noise, but I do. I like Between Sleipnir's Breaths and Novæ more than Troubled Air, and I found Aurora boring. Novæ is all crunchy and dissonant and great, and well on it's way to making a guitar sound like a didgeridoo.

MiniMoto
86

Seriously, drone metal is amazing. This album is brutal and dense but does a great job balancing out a lot of the density that Sunn O is known while staying relaxing and meditative but also bringing new psychedelic tribal ideas. The first song man was just an experience, definitely the asskicker of the album with some sick cover art. Would meditate to this again.

Purchasing Life Metal from Amazon helps support Album of the Year. Or consider a donation?


Added on: February 5, 2019