Post-metal super group SUMAC will be following up with their Keiji Haino with yet another collaborative effort again this year, following up on their 2018 effort American Dollar Bill – Keep Facing Sideways, You’re Too Hideous to Look at Face On . This new collaborative album will be released on Trost records, and is a direct follow up to the 2018 collaborative effort.
The announcement was made of SUMAC’s social media page, with the group expressing great pleasure to collaborate with Haino on the new project once again. American Dollar Bill – Keep Facing Sideways, You’re Too Hideous to Look at Face On along with SUMAC’s latest album release Love in Shadow, were both noted for their heavy experimentation and completely improvised recording sessions.
SUMAC features features the Vancouver, British Columbia-based Nick Yacyshyn of Baptists, the Brooklyn, NYC-based Brian Cook of Russian Circles, and formerly of These Arms Are Snakes, and Botch) and Vashon, Washington-based Aaron Turner of Mamiffer, Old Man Gloom, and formerly of Isis. Meanwhile Keiji Haino’s work has included rock, free improvisation, noise music, percussion, psychedelic music, minimalism and drone music in the past.
Although Love in Shadow is an extremely experimental effort, Turner explained that the album holds a deeply personal core which is central to the album. The album seeks to document his own experiences with love in a philosophical manner that has plagued many great thinkers for thousands of years.
“Since many of the surface level aspects of our being are often used as divisive tools to separate/alienate us from one another, the intent here is reveal that at our base level all humans desire and need to be loved and accepted for who they are, for just being,” Turner explained.
He describes it as an emotional experience, away from the typical hate and nihilism that some groups relate with metal. Despite this, he also understand that love as a concept is nuanced and holds many facets. “At times [you] can simultaneously love and hate the same person. In that way I feel like what we do and even a lot of other music that I enjoy and I feel is deeply human, doesn’t just cover one aspect of the emotional spectrum,” Turner explained in an interview with Invisible Oranges.
“Certainly there’s a lot of metal music where people just espouse a doctrine of hatred, but I think most of the time, except in cases where people maybe are just severely and truly damaged, a lot of that is just posturing. I also think that hate and anger have at their root fear,” Turner continued in the interview.” Underneath fear is the desire to be loved. Essentially, you wouldn’t be fearful of other people or what other people might do to you if you didn’t have the desire to live. And the desire to live is based around, I think, a love of life.”
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