by Benji Heywood (@benjiheywood)
For the faithful who “subscribe” to Sub Pop’s long-running singles club, a 7” with a tune on each side is what you’ve come to expect. If you procured a copy of SUMAC’s contribution to this venerated series that’s featured pretty much every one of your favorite bands over the last 30 years, you’d immediately notice that the A side and the B side are credited as the same song: “Two Beasts (excerpt).” That’s because SUMAC’s “Two Beasts” is anything but your typical 7” song. Clocking in at a brisk 18 minutes – or roughly 15 minutes longer than your average single – the song is so long that only two thirds of it fit across the two sides of the 7,” hence the “excerpt” in the title. To listen to the whole kit-and-kaboodle you can stream it via SUMAC’s Bandcamp page (nowhere else, though, please; SUMAC protested Spotify CEO Daniel EK’s despicable remarks by refusing to release 2020’s excellent May You Be Held on the platform).
Subverting expectations is the band’s modus operandi, whether it be releasing an improvisational metal album recorded in one day accompanied by noise-drone-improv master Keiji Haino or reframing guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner’s guttural growl as love song poetry on the band’s career highlight, 2018’s Love In Shadow. SUMAC, rounded out by drummer Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists, Erosion) and bassist Brian Cook (Botch, Russian Circles), is the rare heavy music band that defies categorization. Sure, the hallmarks of heavy music are evident – down-tuned guitars, spastic drumming, peeling feedback, head-bobbin’ riffs, and the vocal howls, oh the howls – but the end result of listening to SUMAC is always something other. It’s as if SUMAC is manipulating the CERN supercollider while the rest of us mortals are just now learning to make fire; SUMAC is that far ahead of the pack.
For the uninitiated, “Two Beasts” is a comprehensive document of where SUMAC was in the late fall of 2020. The song hits on all the elements that make the band unique. Bowel-loosening low end? Check. Indecipherable time signature patterns? Yup. Long, empty pauses and repetitive structures? Yessir. Mammoth grooves? You betcha. “Two Beasts” is experimental metal at its finest, 18 minutes of left turns with enough rewarding pay-offs to make it worth a close listen. The band’s newfound love of negative space and jazz-inspired arrangements counterintuitively add an element of danger to the music. If big riffage is heavy music’s best friend and quiet moments its kryptonite, then SUMAC seem to operate under the adage keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
One of SUMAC’s strengths, once again evident on “Two Beasts,” is their commitment to fidelity. SUMAC recordings sound good. It’s hard to imagine music this brutal being so pleasurable to listen to and it’s a major differentiator between them and their peers. Once again recorded at The Unknown, an old, converted church in the sleepy Washington town of Anacortes, “Two Beasts” sounds live and meticulously produced at the same time. This is most likely a testament to the exquisite ability of the players and recording engineers involved; these are music lifers at the top of their game. Listening to “Two Beasts,” SUMAC is a band that can seemingly do anything, except for maybe fitting one of their songs on a single 7”. Now that’s impossible.