Thus speaks the booming voice that greets Frodo Baggins when he puts on the Ring at the Prancing Pony in Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring, and this same ominous declaration echoes in the intro track of Sunrot’s new EP Passages. Indeed, the musical void crafted by Sunrot lacks any trace of wholesome life, although it isn't filled by “death” either—at least, not in the metal subgenre sense. Instead, the style of Passages is very much rooted in the abrasive noise side of sludgy doom metal. Or, as they describe themselves on their Bandcamp page, “compulsive post noise power sludge”.
The EP, only lasting a short 16 minutes in total, is composed of two main songs (“The First Wound” and “Untethered”), separated by the interlude “Sleep” and bookended by two tracks that serve as ambient intro and outro. While both “The First Wound” and “Untethered” begin in a rather calm and relaxing way, with patient plucking or slowly rumbling melodies, their music is, for the most part, characterized by intense, pummeling guitar riffs and horrendous screams of agony. These piercing screeches of the vocalist are an acquired taste and may not be too appealing for some listeners, but they certainly add to the Sunrot’s clear goal of presenting heavy, cacophonous sensations of despair. The outro track “Ra”, amidst an eerily droning atmosphere, finishes off the EP with an audio sample discussing the imaginative potential of the music medium.
Overall, while Passages is rather disappointing in its short runtime, it contains interesting snippets that are intriguing for fans of droning, suffocating sludge metal. Sunrot, after 2023's The Unfailing Rope and this new EP, are on a promising trajectory with their special slice of punishing noise, and I already look forward to the next tunes they'll summon from the void.
