Review: Sumac – The Healer

Style: Sludge metal, experimental post-metal, drone (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Lathe, Big|Brave, Mizmor, Five the Hierophant, Thou
Review by: Dave
Country: Canada
Release date: 21 June 2024

My taste in music generally leans towards the cheesy, the fantastical, and the dramatic: albums like Amorphis’s Silent Waters and Seventh Wonder’s The Great Escape are my bread and butter, showcasing passion and storytelling in a borderline saccharine manner. However, I am a man (read: gay little forest goblin) of many facets, and I, too, like to indulge in things that are dissonant, angry, and bizarre on occasion, whether it be the untethered intensity of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Dissociation or the psychedelic explorations of The Mars Volta’s Frances the Mute. So when I hear of Sumac’s The Healer and its dark, unsettling sludge improvisation, I’m curious to try it out, despite the chance that it sits well outside my tastes. Will Sumac buck the traditional Dave taste trends, or will The Healer’s healing message fall completely on deaf ears?

A name like Sumac would suggest a shady tree in a meadow with perhaps a slight air of contemplativeness, but this is about as far from Sumac‘s approach as you can get: their music is gray, decaying, and occasionally menacing. The Healer is the logical conclusion to the imagery of Ashenspire‘s Hostile Architecture, where a dystopian hellscape designed to make you suffer has finally collapsed in its entirety and all that remains are rubble and the shell of a former civilization. Moments of vile intensity are juxtaposed against droning feedback where your gaze cannot be pulled from the weathered skyline until you’re buried under yet another tower crumbling underneath its fractured structure. The Healer is a good illustration of how catharsis and the healing process are often non-linear and occasionally outside of our control, as both moments of dread and moments of brief brightness are often bookended by droning improvisational sections, a faint glimmer of hope apparent in lyrics that juxtapose grim imagery with optimistic symbolism, such as “World of Light”’s “Rats stir, quiver / Under sun’s unbidden pallor / Oh, muted hearts / Through clasped hands glimmer / Shine!” and my personal favorite, “New Rites”’s “From flesh and fallow limbs / Petals open.”

The Healer luxuriates in moods and atmospherics, with extended and feedback-heavy guitarwork making up a considerable chunk of the album, but Sumac are also not afraid to incorporate heavier, more focused moments where they are needed. Incomprehensibly huge opener “World of Light” drifts in and out of improvised sections, but fills its last two minutes with an explosion of Opeth-gone-dissodeath riffs; “Yellow Dawn” starts off in a similar fashion to “World of Light,” but a third of the way through slides into an aggressive and psychedelic jam with squealing guitars, pummeling drums, and thick rumbling bass; “New Rites” sits the longest in sludge territory, including the heaviest drum instrumentation on the album, coalescing with The Dillinger Escape Plan-esque buzzy jazz guitarwork to positively crush the listener to smithereens before closing on an emotive guitar solo accented with powerful drum stabs; and “The Stone’s Turn” is likely the most terrifying track, introduced with scraping guitars that build into a whirlpool of abject incomprehensible chaos through a variety of unsettling guitar textures with only the faintest blip of conventional riffage shining through its murk.

While The Healer is certainly well-paced, giving the listener time to meditate to improvised drone moments before accompanying these sections with heavier sludge sensibilities, a considerable amount of patience is needed to fully enjoy it, along with a willingness to sit in dissonant, bleak, and occasionally terrifying atmospheres. This is not helped by the runtime: The Healer’s shortest two tracks are just shy of thirteen minutes and the longest are a towering twenty-five minutes, making for a difficult-to-digest experience over its nearly eighty-minute runtime. Those who revel in avant-garde instrumentation and improvised jazz will find this a quote-unquote “comfortable” experience; for me, however, this makes for an album that’s highly regarded but requires a particular state of mind to revisit.

The Healer has succeeded in expanding my taste palate, giving me an appreciation for oppressive soundscapes through its vivid lyricism and message of finding hope among decay and rubble. I would have preferred it to be just a touch shorter, but I will most certainly be picking this up when I have a craving for drawn-out, experimental sludge. If you have a taste for extended pieces that ebb and flow between unsettling mood exploration and sludgy chaos, The Healer will unequivocally restore you in full.

Recommended tracks: Yellow Dawn, New Rites, The Stone’s Turn
You may also like: Minsk, NNMM, Bong-Ra, Zos, Sol
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives | RateYourMusic

Label: Thrill Jockey Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Sumac is:
– Aaron Turner (guitars, vocals)
– Nick Yacyshyn (drums)
– Brian Cook (bass)