Historically, drums have played a pretty important role in the evolution of heavy music. From the crushing doom grooves Bill Ward brought to Black Sabbath, through to the embryonic blastbeats of Mick Harris on Napalm Death’s legendary ‘Scum’ album, via Dave Lombardo’s neck-breaking thrash playing and double-kick abuse in the early days of Slayer, it would be impossible to imagine how extreme metal in its many forms could exist without a solid sticksman keeping time at the back. And yet there are a small set of artists over the past couple of decades who have proven that you can still be earth-shakingly heavy with nary a bongo in sight. Sunn O))) have been creating world-ending drone-laden doom for the best part of two decades now, and have managed to elevate themselves to festival headline-level without any kind of percussive elements in their music at all. Even ambient black metal luminaries Wolves In The Throne Room abandoned drums completely on their last release, the dreamy ‘Celestite’.
One of the newer acts to have made a splash in the sea of drumless heaviness are Swiss duo Twinesuns who, following their 2014 debut ‘The Leaving’ and follow-up EP ‘A Blackened Planet’, are back this year with a second full-length in the shape of ‘The Empire Never Ended’. Released on Pelagic Records (owned and operated by Robin Staps of The Ocean), the album is an 80 minute tour-de-force of hypnotic guitars and pulsing synthesizers. Less a collection of what could typically be considered ‘songs’, ‘The Empire Never Ended’ sounds more like the score to a movie, though likely not the kind the majority of the general public would be lining up to see. From the first seconds of opener ‘Simon The Magus’, your mind is enveloped in thunderous reverb and delay-soaked guitars. Layers of feedback drench the riffs to create a wall of noise that’s impossible to ignore, though Twinesuns quickly (well, sort-of quickly) prove that sheer volume is not their only tool. After a few minutes, the track drops out into a delicate, yet skin-crawling, passage that’s as beautiful as it is unsettling, before a cascade of yet more screeching feedback brings the track to a close.
Second track ‘Die Zeit Ist Da’ relies heavily on the band’s array of sonic tools to create its claustrophobic atmosphere. Centered around a dark and ominous loop that builds over 13 plus minutes, the song creates the feeling of being trapped in a wet, windowless room with only your own fracturing mind for company. It’s not an easy or even enjoyable listen, but is nevertheless entirely memorable if only in giving your subconscious something to play in the background during your next nightmare. Throughout the rest of the album there are variations on the general themes Twinesuns have worked to conjure here, such as the pulsing synth that provides the backbone of ‘System Regained’, or the low-key John Carpenter-esque ambience of ‘Pneuma’. The band performed and recorded the entire album live in-studio, and as such there is a raw and loose feeling to the proceedings, though the lack of any kind of rigid rhythm section means that it never feels sloppy, and the blurred edges of where riffs begin and end only adds to the dreamlike atmosphere.
As with any drone, this is not a record for everyone. To be even more blunt, it’s probably not even a record for most fans of heavy or extreme music. This is bleak and long-winded music that requires patience and attention, and could easily be written off as formless noise to untrained ears. But those with a penchant for the kind of music best experienced in a dark, candle-lit room on a cold night should find much to enjoy here, if ‘enjoy’ is the right word. ‘The Empire Never Ended’ is something of an endurance test, a grim and harrowing experience that will push the majority of listeners to the edge of their seat, if not their very sanity. One suspects this is exactly what Twinesuns were aiming for.
JAMES LEE