Episode 137: Brute Force: on Sunn O)))'s 'Life Metal'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2022

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What Evil Dead 2 is to the Baroque, Sunn O))) is to Brutalism. Or more like: if the likening of Evil Dead 2 to the Baroque felt like a stretch in episode 136, the brutalist bona fides of Sunn O)))'s drone metal are incontestable. In this episode, their 2019 masterpiece Life Metal frames a conversation touching on 20th-century avant garde music, the tactility of sound, the metaphysics of the Kickass Riff, Aztec aesthetics, the virtues of impermanence, and of course, the sublime beauty of brutalist buildings. Listen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel Support us on Patreon Find us on Discord Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau! Get your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop REFERENCES Sunn O))), Life Metal Theatre of Eternal Music, musical group Daniel Albright, Panaesthetics Brian Eno, Imaginary Landscapes John Wray, “Heady Metal” Nyarlathotep, Lovecraft character Byung-Hul Chan, The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism Fred Wilcox (dir.), Forbidden Planet H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness Godfrey Reggio (dir.), [Koyaanisquatsi](imdb.com/title/tt0085809/) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.8	For more episodes or to support the podcast,
0:23.3	go to weirdst. I'm J.F. Martel.
0:53.4	Impermanence yields the eternal, strangely. That's where this
0:57.1	conversation on Sun's life metal ends, and we're very happy with the coiling path that traces on its way
1:03.8	there. A drone metal band Sun, that's spelled S-U-N-N--O, parenthesis, parenthesis, the second part being a kind of typographical
1:14.2	glyph, released Life Metal in 2019 under the Southern Lord Records label. It's their eighth album.
1:21.5	There's really no point in trying to describe their sound. It's the kind of thing you need to hear
1:26.3	for yourself. So I invite you to
1:28.2	find them online and give them a listen so that you know what we're dealing with in this episode.
1:33.0	As Capstones go, this is our last show of the year, we couldn't have asked for a heavier,
1:38.2	more monolithic slab of black granite than this masterful recording. In lieu of elaborating further on our topic, I'll take the
1:46.2	time I have here to thank the guests who joined us to explore the weird in the last 12 months,
1:51.3	Duncan Barford, Matt Cardin, and Victorian Elson. Thanks also to Meredith Michael for her indispensable
1:57.5	assistance, for being a font of wisdom, and for doing three stellar episodes with us in
2:02.8	2022, including the one at Illuminated Brewworks in Chicago. This will forever be the year Weird
2:09.4	Studies got its beer. Of course, we want to thank everyone who tunes in to our podcast, especially
2:15.7	those of you who've made that bold leap and decided to
2:18.3	support us on Patreon.
2:20.1	There'd be no Weird Studies podcast without you.
2:23.2	You'd think that after five years, Phil and I would have had enough of talking at and to each
	...

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