Review by George on March 11, 2020.

Pyroclasts is the second of two Sunn O))) albums released in 2019 and it's the one I like less by a pretty significant margin. Musically, it's pretty much exactly what you'd picture when you think of this band. It's primarily made up of thundering basslines which crawl along at a snail's pace, a monotony unbroken by any form of percussion for the entire duration of the album. Sections are nonexistent - as a matter of fact from moment to moment within each song pretty much nothing changes, so one has to take a step back and look at the bigger picture to really see what's going on. It's not uncommon to have a mountainous ten-minute buildup, but in classic Sunn fashion it remains unresolved. Now, all of that isn't exclusive to this band, it could be applied to drone as an entire genre. And therein lies the problem.

My main problem with this release is how - dare I say it - generic it is. I believe pretty much any drone act could have put this together, so far is it removed from the ever-changing, challenging and genre-defying standard of this band. Gone is the Sunn O))) that released the surreal, terrifying Big Church, the hauntingly beautiful Alice and the crushingly claustrophobic Báthory Erzsébet. All of those songs fulfil their purpose to near perfection, gripping and immersing you in their respective worlds and emotions and not letting go until the very end. Pyroclasts falls flat in comparison; sure, it's some pretty good background drone to throw on if you want to read or relax, but the fact that that's it is disappointing. The line between incredibly slow yet impactful music and boring monotony has been crossed.

Sunn O))) make simple music. In fact, they've practically defined minimalism since the beginning of their careers, and Pyroclasts definitely holds a candle to that. If you sit back and let yourself get lost in the music you can easily become immersed, basking in a strange calm amidst the brutal bass-driven loudness. But I've come to expect experimentation from them, some element, somewhere, that challenges you, makes you uncomfortable, scares you, forces you to really think about what you're listening to. That's what this album lacks.

In conclusion, is Pyroclasts a bad release? I wouldn't say so, but within a discography as varied and thought-provoking as Sunn O)))'s, it's definitely a low point. However, I will concede that maybe there's something deeper here, some artistic merit I'm unable to appreciate. I've seen people discussing what images this album evokes in them, everything from towering, monolithic mountains to fathomless voids underneath, so give it a go. Who knows, maybe you'll find some hidden beauty in the soundscapes that I just can't see. For me though, it remains background drone and nothing more.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10