If we’re to start at the end, Aaron Turner of SUMAC concluded the band’s set on September 7th, 2018 at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus with a singular message: “There can be no redundancy when talking about love, fostering love for ourselves and for each other, for the world. That’s what this music is about.” After a quick thank you to the crowd, he added, “Take kindness, respect, and empathy for yourself and for others out into the world.”
It was the first time he had addressed the audience all night, a punctuation at the end of a set of brilliantly cathartic and primal music. At the culmination of an hour of brutal and at times hypnotic experimental metal, all that was left was a message of love.
SUMAC’s live sets, like their studio recordings, are deeply immersive, vehemently powerful, and presented with a degree of difficulty. Their penchant for inventive structures travels a path of wrought tension and exhaustive physicality as much as it does meditative tranquility. Watching SUMAC—the trio of Turner, Brian Cook, and Nick Yacyshyn—perform live in a small room can feel, dare I say, spiritual. On that night, it was the transcendent experience I needed. The band offered the chance to step outside of my mind, to dissociate into their seismic embrace of pummeling sludge, apocalyptic bellows, and mangled dissonance. It came at just the right time.
My mom, a truly remarkable, loving, and strong willed woman, passed away in June of that year, three days prior to the on-sale date for tickets to the SUMAC show. Assuming it would (and damn well should) sell out instantly, I bought a ticket at what felt emotionally like the lowest point in my life. Together with family in the house I grew up in, I was still very much in mourning. Out of state and out of sorts, as people came by to share memories, support, and love, I hadn’t left the house since the funeral and was in no way thinking about my next show. Me being me, however, my anxiety (probably instilled by mom) in regards to the show selling out led me to buy a ticket knowing that in a few months time I was going to want to see SUMAC. (Hell, in hindsight I should have picked up a ticket for their National Sawdust show the next night after Vitus.)
In the world of metal, even within the subsets of avant-garde and forward thinking art metal, love and compassion for humankind are themes rarely explored. That’s not to suggest that your favorite metal band is a group of savages void of tenderness (it’s often quite the opposite), but the directive to “take empathy for yourself and for others out into the world” is most definitely not a sentiment often expressed. On tour in support of their then new album, Love In Shadow, SUMAC, being the beacon for good that they are, were exploring ideas of love as the principle construct of humanity.
When the band writes about love, they’re not speaking of that fluttering feeling when you’re swooning around town, but the profound nature of compassion for all—the sense of empathy needed in a world that’s prone to crumbling; and, of course, the devastation that occurs in the void of love. Anyone who has lost a parent too early understands that feeling of love swallowed whole, an emptiness that, try as you might, can’t really be filled. That sense of dread, longing, and loss is tantamount to SUMAC’s apocalyptic scourge; the impact of their music’s colossal design doesn’t have the same weight without it, but it’s only felt because of love at the other end of the spectrum.
I didn’t grow up listening to metal—I had my stint with nu-metal at the time of its inception; let’s just say that I was the wrong age at the wrong time—but over the years, as the pressures of being a functioning (or semi-functioning) adult continued their uphill climb, I found a true sense of calm in the extremities only metal’s outer reaches can provide. What began with listening to grindcore in my headphones at the ol’ day job blossomed into an eventual exploration of death metal’s versatility and the outer realms of metal at its most forward-thinking. While the genre’s lyrics, themes, art, and general essence are often rooted in society’s destruction, disgust and contempt for a decaying world, and gruesome levels of unspeakable terror, I’ve personally found relaxation, catharsis in its obliteration.
It’s within the chaos of extreme metal that day-to-day stress seems to momentarily dissolve. It’s hard to worry about the hundred different things on your to-do list when the drums shift from a stampede to astonishing polyrhythm sprawl. It’s hard to get down on your personal flaws (of which I have many) when there’s an avalanche of amorphous riffs in your earbuds. The state of the world is a grave concern, the hope for peace, tolerance, and love can feel futile, but for just a moment, listening to some maniac’s voice gurgling with a monstrous intensity from deep within the pit of their stomach, I can find the proverbial “zen” to keep me going. Sometimes love and serenity are found in the least likely of places.
Live shows often leave deep memories. In my case, the details grow fuzzier with every passing year as a lifetime of show going tends to blend together. I remember the experience of being at Saint Vitus that night, though, the draining emotion and vulnerability that SUMAC were able to conjure with each profound choice of dazzling rhythmic dexterity and every battering riff, the overall weight becoming palpable. I remember zoning out, feeling moments of transcendence in the spaces where lurching aural catastrophe was met with contemplative drones, the visceral element in tune with the heart of their sound. Though surrounded by people, I felt entirely alone—yet lifted in spirit. To my good fortune (and to everyone else’s), this particular show was recorded in full cataclysmic fidelity (later mixed by Kurt Ballou and mastered by James Plotkin), a gift from the band, the venue, and Aaron Turner’s record label, SIGE Records. To me, it felt like something more cosmic: A gift from the universe, a sign to remember both the experience and the circumstances that led to it.
From the set-opening feedback of “Attis’ Blade,” SUMAC launch their way into the vortex, careening and feral, but patient. Coiled around the brilliance of the spiraling rhythms (Nick Yacyshyn is a national treasure), the band erupt in unpredictable tremors as passages sustain meditative bliss between gasps of unhinged brutality. As with everything they do, there’s an intentionality to the shape of SUMAC’s sets, the pacing is often glacial prior to collision. The push and pull is captured to perfection on “The Task,” a nearly twenty minute long odyssey that detaches itself from this existence mid-way through, oozing with emotional resonance, and thudding in time between ear-splitting intensity and profound minimalist resolve. SUMAC’s performance is thoughtful yet primal, an outpouring of emotional heft via complex composition. Getting to relive the impeccable set over and over is for me a constant reminder that while my mom is gone, she’s never forgotten.
In absolutely no way (not in a billion years) would this be the album that my mom would choose for me to remember her by, and that’s okay. She wouldn’t mind. Bless their hearts, as a child in my formative years my parents gave me control of both the radio and stereo, an act I now reflect on as an immeasurable kindness. As of this writing I am currently a matter of days away from becoming a first time dad, a thrilling chance to experience love at a new level of profundity. As someone that has dedicated my life to music, I’ve been thinking a lot about how parents can either shape the taste of their kids or, as in the case of mine, allow us to form their own. I’m appreciative of the opportunity I had to dive headfirst down never ending rabbit holes of music old and new. As much as I would like to think I can impart some wisdom on the little guy, offering a steep learning curve, I’m well aware that it would undoubtedly alienate him among his friends (“What do you mean the other first graders don’t like SUMAC?! Buncha chumps.”). All I can hope to do is impart the ideals Turner offered that night: “Take kindness, respect, and empathy for yourself and for others out into the world”.
Dan Goldin is a writer and editor at Post-Trash, a site he created back in 2015. He’s also the founder of Exploding In Sound Records, and has existed on the outskirts of the music industry for the past fifteen years. He wants to share the music that’s important to him, with no strings attached. When not writing he’s seeing shows, packing records, painting, and spending time with his wonderfully understanding wife and newborn son. Follow him at @post_trash_ or @paintingwithdan on X and Instagram.
