TheFader

The only time I ever saw Sunn0))) perform I watched from the back. It was at Avalon, which used to be a church. The members were on stage in black robes, backs mostly to the audience, artificial smoke billowing. It was a little boring. Towards the end of the set they got more aggressive and I made my way up front. Stephen O’Malley walked from the stack of amplifiers with a bottle of red wine and poured it on the crowd, including much of my white T-shirt. It’s a good thing I have a lot of them. Two and a half years later, that shirt is lightly stained, like I got a wicked nosebleed. I haven’t seen them play since then. Kitschy souvenir, it seemed both a mutual high and lowlight.

A few years earlier, my friend Daniel and I took a spring break trip from DC to New York, crashed at a friend’s apartment when he was gone for the weekend. Khanate, O’Malley’s previous band, was playing at Tonic, a club that no longer exists. Everyone in Khanate was wearing black. The singer, had two microphones: one that sounded regular, one that made him sound like a goblin. O’Malley had three color-coded stacks of amplifiers and speakers. It was aggressively loud. I hope I had earplugs. Khanate has been described as playing slowly, but that is untrue. They are just playing at half speed, pieces of songs chopped and elongated to their basic atoms. This was demonstrated by the drummer who spent the majority of the time with sticks in his hand and his hands crossed in an X above his head. When it came time to play, he crashed down fiercely would play three or four notes, break one or both sticks and then start again. Occasionally, he would hit a gong. The audience was mostly men. New York had recently instituted its smoking ban, which was a surprisingly smooth transition. Towards the end of the set someone lit up, pained into feeding his addiction. No one told him to stop.

It’s been a few years since I listened to Khanate. I didn’t remember until I heard it that more than ten minutes of growling into “Fields,” Alan Dubin says “I did this for you.” While he sounds mystically creepy, he also sounds like a jealous boyfriend. I did remember that he says, “My god, the smiles! The sneezes!” Are they good things or bad things? It doesn’t sound like he is drawing a distinction.

Khanate broke up not long after I saw them. It can’t be fun or easy to make agitated music consistently. For most people, at least those in my office, it’s not fun to listen to Khanate even for a few minutes. But there is something worthy in visiting horribleness if it’s doled sparingly, same idea as a yinyang.