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It doesn’t take much for you to know that you’re listening to Sunn O))), but a bass riff so slow and time-freezing as the one that starts first track Richard is generally a herald of something special. And something special 00 Void was, the first full-length from the band after the Grimm Robe Demos and only a very mild progression from their cold, sterile drone. There’s no drums, orchestras or Attila Csihar to be found here, although we do hear the violin and vocals of Petra Haden, woven seamlessly into the syrupy sonic folds. This upfront hum that you focus on in Richard gives way to backing strangeness, what sounds almost like screeching voices before the track abruptly dies, and you’re slowly brought into NN O)))’s embrace, free of such eerie disturbances... almost. Whether it’s actually there, or whether your mind is just imagining it to paint in the gaps, there does seem a solitary male voice, chanting in supplication behind the curtains of sound as if hidden from view in the dark corners of an abandoned temple. Easy to dismiss as your imagination, but you’re not really sure...

...And that lack of surety is always what stops me from doing the cynical thing and dismissing Sunn O))), as so many do, as a boring, one-trick pony. I wouldn’t praise this, or any other album from this band if it didn’t have such an effect on me, if it didn’t strike such a strange and terrible atmosphere. We’ve all read about the melting glaciers and crushing tectonic plates that people generally use to describe this band until they’ve become such a cliché that even referring to them any more is passé. Yet the reason people describe the music like this is because it fits, such is the primordial tug of emotions involved. True, 00 Void isn’t a perfect album – Melvins cover Rabbits Revenge and closing track Ra At Dusk are rather dull (and when I say a piece of drone is dull, you can be sure it’s pretty fucking dull!) – but in terms of playing very, very, very slow doom and making it sound rather brilliant instead of rather awful, it’s a fine purchase for experienced droneheads. Newcomers, if it isn’t obvious enough, should start elsewhere.

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