Love in Shadow (Colored Vinyl)

Sumac wrote the follow-up to 2016's What One Becomes before they entered the studio with Keiji Haino, producing the colossal American Dollar Bill - Keep Facing Sideways, You're Too Hideous to Look at Face On. However, the experience with Haino greatly informed the band's performance ethic and dynamics. As a result, Love in Shadow feels rawer and more spontaneous than past Sumac recordings. The album's four epic-length compositions progress through fractured, battering rhythms, sludge riffage, near-silent breakdowns, and chaotic improvisation, all maintaining a balance of measured, studied aggression and inspired mayhem. The album's highlight is "Attis' Blade," which begins with a series of slow drum crashes before forming a procession of devilish drumming and mesmerizing guitar thunder. Things slowly begin to unravel until it reaches a crescendo of searing noise and free jazz drum splatter...and then another one soon afterward. "Arcing Silver" begins with nearly suffocated blues riffs that rock back and forth, slowly being shaken from their foundation before an abstract breakdown and a brutal finish. "Ecstasy of Unbecoming" begins with a long period of smoldering feedback before a menacing rhythm emerges, gradually leading up to an extended passage of mangled feedback and a vicious conclusion. Lyrically, the album is focused on love, but not in the typical, romanticized way. Instead, it's about the basic human desire to be loved and accepted, the spiritual aspects of love, and the negative effects of corrupted love. Rather than the passionate qualities of love, Sumac channel the obsessive ones that lead to destruction and oppression. The result is a bracing expression of visceral emotions that refuses to go the easiest, most comforting route, as well as the most focused Sumac album yet. ~ Paul Simpson