Day: February 2, 2018

The Ukrainians Nonsun certainly have not set themselves problems related to the marketing of their product, in the moment of composing the album: if already proposing a genre like a sludge drone doom with experimental traits reduces to the bone the pool of potential listeners, to do so with a double CD for a duration of about an hour and a half is equivalent to the act of planting nails on a coffin in which was locked every form of possible winking. The beauty of all this, however, is that the duo of Lviv manages to put on the plate a work certainly mammoth but not heavy, in the sense that, subject to its nature, proves to be a challenging listening without being boring. Moreover, a musical style of this type, if interpreted without a minimum of variations on the theme, is likely to remain too indigestible to anyone: Black Snow Desert is not reduced, therefore, to an endless sequence of drone sequences but also offers abundant portions of sludge doom, disturbed and disturbing enough to fatally attract attention. Absurdly, a length that could appear almost a form of self-destruction, instead allows Nonsun to develop and express in a more congruous way what they have to offer. Well dosed and balanced in all its components and excellently performed by multi-instrumentalist Goatooth and drummer Alpha, Black Snow Desert is the result of a compositional talent that avoids the use of endless sound solutions and no outlet. Good therefore Nonsun in circumventing this obstacle, proposing themselves with this their debut on long (or rather, very long…) distance, as something more than a simple substitute to Sunn O)))), Earth and company of experimenters.

2018 – Cimmerian Shade Recordings