SUMAC – The Healer

The collective of Aaron Turner (ISIS), Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists), and Brian Cook (Botch) have once again proven there is such a thing as beautiful bleakness.Too often as bands progress through their careers they take the comfortable, digestible, and tried-and-true elements of their sound and pair them down into cohesive, intimate, and relatable vignettes of their former selves. SUMAC has achieved the opposite with The Healer, a sprawling 75 minute behemoth built on the assumption the listener is both patient enough to allow the band to stretch out, and eager enough to explore alongside the musicians as they dig down deep into chasms of dissonance, dread, and finally catharsis.

-Zakusz