To those outside the world of heavy music, the genre can seem clamorous, miserable, threatening, and offensive. Those who have found a place in the scene, however, know just how beautiful, enriching, uplifting, and therapeutic it can be. Like tonguing an aching tooth or squeezing a throbbing joint, the pain and anger expressed in doom and sludge have the potential to assuage our deepest emotional injuries, far more than what most would consider pretty music. More than catharsis, the anguish and ferocity in some of the most challenging forms of metal music can make the listener feel that they are understood, that they are in good company with others who have found a home in heavy sounds.
New Jersey’s Sunrot have been providing this kind of sonic solidarity since 2014, and especially so since their 2017 LP Sunnata, whose approach to music that is both heavy and deep made it a fast favorite among artists, critics, and fans alike. A band that has always worn their radical politics on their sleeves, Sunrot have never prioritized publicity over sincerity, always explicitly directing their art to those in the margins, always providing a voice for the voiceless.
Their most recent release, The Unfailing Rope, exemplifies their radical, compassionate politics, as it memorializes “Brian ‘Pork’ Dodgeson, Olga Miller, Maxx Ortiz, and all those lost the systemic failure of the racist, classist, and abhorrent War on Drugs,” and as it is “dedicated to all people fighting against oppression and still believing a better world is possible.”
A shining example of all that is good, meaningful, and pioneering about heavy music today. The LP finds the band at ease with its songcraft as they explore new sonic territories, allowing organic experimentation to loop and blossom over a latticework of fully realized doom. Though those who have been paying attention have already included Sunrot in coversations about Primitive Man, Body Void, Thou, Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean, and Dragged Into Sunlight, The Unfailing Rope demonstrates just how much Sunrot has to offer to can expand the style beyond its gradually loosening boundaries.
The album opens with “Descent,” a prolonged sound exploration that sets the tone for the whole work. Symphonic and carnivalesque sounds are thrown into a funhouse mirror, into a grinder, and become dark, troubling, and bare. One gets the impression that they’ve fallen through a trapdoor from the world of riches and illusions into the subterranean boiler rooms of the real. Carnivalesque is, after all, an artform focusing on destabilizing and subverting power structures and creating new worlds, and Sunrot truly has their hand in ushering in a new and better social, political, and musical world.
“Trepanation” dissolves the multi-hyphenate boundaries within the world of doom. Featuring Organ Dealer’s Scot Moriarty and a gurglingly graphic real-life description of drilling a hole in one’s own head, the song sashays from Electric Wizard to High on Fire to Indian as if online commenters haven’t been trying to seal off these stylistic pockets from cross-contamination for decades. Sunrot’s ability to ease from monstrous, tone-driven amp-worship to exquisite riff wizardry is stunning, and the nine-minute-song has the listener on their seat-edge throughout, contemplating the sloshing of their brain fluids to the slow rhythm of irrepressible headbanging.
“Gutter” is, on its own, a perfect encapsulation of the band’s brilliant and nuanced songwriting approach. A panoply of sonic textures, the song never falls into the usual wall-of-sound rut that so many doom and sludge bands veer into. Instead, Sunrot employ negative space, allowing different instrumental configurations to emerge and recede. They give their riffs room to breathe, allowing room for the listener to occupy space in the song, to live in the song, as the mood shifts from vengeful to pensive, to woeful, all over a portrait of colonialism and ecocide. The affective impact of the song is made all the more powerful thanks to the talents of Bryan Funck of Thou and Emily McWilliams a.k.a. Silver Godling, two of the most distinct voices in genre-defying heavy music today.
“The One Who You Feed, Pt. 2” is a partner track to “The One Who You Feed, Pt. 1,” which featured on Sunnata. Where the predecessor comprised a series of rhetorical questions about the choices one should make, about the life one should lead, “Pt. 2” is the tough love of a true friend who knows you better than you know yourself. This sob-inducing life-reckoner may as well be screamed into the mirror to come face to face with the hurt we put ourselves through unnecessarily. “It’s not your fault/What happened wasn’t right/By accepting your path/You don’t have to feel this way anymore . . . You can heal now . . . Just keep holding on.” While those outside of this musical world may never understand it, this song is a golden exemplar of how extreme sounds can purge us of our deepest pain.
Following the undulating noise experimentation around Jesco White’s voice in “The Cull,” Sunrot puts a sword to the throat of the father in “Patricide,” a song that decries the violence inherent in toxic masculinity, a violence that, like a crown of thorns, affects the person adorned with it as much as those around them. This song feels especially personal and is another remarkable instantiation of Sunrot’s straying from the proverbial path of metal, a genre that is still associated with the very worst aspects of masculinity. Sunrot, along with a cadre of like-minded artists, are doing their part to heal that hurt and pave a new path. This song is heavier today, as it features the very special and sincerely missed Blake Harrison, master of sound and friend to all.
One wonders if Sunrot ever considered releasing “Tower of Silence” as its own EP, so fully realized is it in its compositional arc and depth. Never rushing and never insisting, the band allows the song to move organically, tectonically, such that passive listening is essentially impossible. Beautiful even when it explores ugliness, the piece is an aural landscape of instrumental hills and valleys, eventually overtaken by explosive habitation, a peak of violent activity that erupts, like the anthropocene, for just one planetary moment, only to dissolve into extinction again.
What can follow a combustion like those eleven minutes of musical expenditure and vocal caterwaul? The static and noise of still-powered electronics, and the voice of one of history’s greatest thinkers, echoing from the void left by humanity’s hubris. James Baldwin’s ode to “Love” is recited over ashes and detritus, an elegy, a warning from the future to those of us now living to practice empathy, to engage actively with love for ourselves and for the our selves in others.
If any band should be deputized to steer the ship of modern metal, it should be Sunrot, whose musical mastery and political engagement have already made them crucial change-makers in a style ready for revolution and radicalization. It is a testament to the years of passionate investment and adherence to values that they have been added to this year’s Roadburn, a festival that has, itself, been a major agent of positivity and progress in the world of heavy sounds. Neither the band nor the fest show any indication of slowing, and with any luck, many more bands and many more fests will see them for the influential movements they are.
Sunrot spoke to Cvlt Nation about The Unfailing Rope.
Firstly, can you introduce the members of Sunrot and any other projects they’d like to promote?
Hey! Thanks so much for taking the time to write these questions for us! We appreciate you so much! To introduce ourselves, we’re Sunrot, a sludgy noisy metal band from north NJ. We have two guitarists, Christopher Eustaquio and Rob Gonzalez. Our bassist Ross Bradley and our drummer Alex Dobrowolski make up the percussive part of the band. And our vocalist and noise person is Lex Santiago. We actually pretty much all do noise but the majority is from Lex. Rob is in another band too. It’s a death grind band called Unhinge. They are killer, and they just finished recording new music so keep an eye out! Ross is also in another band called Quiet Man. They are a Philly based heavy screaming drone clusterfuck of amazing. Don’t sleep on it! Lex has a noise project called Skin Pop, which just put out an ep a few months ago on Mutual Aid Records. Check that out! Chris is a screen printer and has his own company called Convex Printing, you can check out his work on Instagram. You won’t get better quality for a better price anywhere, Sunrot guarantees it haha. And Alex has a bunch of projects. One is their side hustle. They are a master of all trades, not a Jack, Jack. They fix guitars, music equipment, pedals, cameras, cars, just about anything cool. They make noise stuff too. Just hit them up on our Instagram.
The Unfailing Rope is the band’s first full-length since 2017’s amazing Sunnata. How has the band, its art, and its approach to creation changed in that time?
The band has obviously grown older, probably not wiser, and had some lineup switches. We feel more solid now then ever though. Ross is an amazing musician to have on bass!
The art is still very much us, I believe. We’ve wanted to work with Piper Ferrari for a while and it was finally just the right time!
As for the creation of the record and the record itself, I think it’s a more vulnerable record then Sunnata, and I don’t think we planned that, I think it was just thrust onto us by what’s going on around us. I think the fallout of a pandemic where we all had to be really strong had to do with that. I think me going to EMDR to continue working on myself had something to do with that. And I think constantly seeing so much suffering for as long as I can remember in this world and even on a smaller scale in our own communities forced us to turn towards a more healing message but still sonically nihilistic writing approach.
Although there has been time between LPs, the band has been busy writing during that time, releasing splits, EPs, and featuring on compilations. Where do you find inspiration to keep up with the pace of your artistic output?
I look at it like this. The world is dying. We might as well try to get it all out while we can.
Who are some of the musical inspirations for this release? What about lyrical inspirations?
Speaking only for me, the Emma Ruth Rundle album Engine of Hell was a huge inspiration. It gave me courage to not care about being judged and be vulnerable despite that being scary. It made me wanna dig deeper. That album fucks.
The Unfailing Rope experiments with a much broader sonic palate compared to most other metal releases today, and even compared to previous Sunrot releases, particularly in giving space to more ambience and atmosphere. In a genre that often plays the “heavier than thou” game, did it feel like a risk to explore subtler dynamics? Did your dedicated fanbase and established artistic credibility help?
It’s absolutely a risk. It’s a risk even being who we are in this band. Most of us aren’t straight. Some of us aren’t cis. Not all of us are white. I feel like even being a fat, non-cis-male vocalist is a turn off to some folks. I think the fact that we aren’t making tough guy music–though there’s nothing wrong with tough guy music, we enjoy it too–is a risk. Being vulnerable and goofy is a risk. Not staying in one genre is a risk. Being weird is a risk. And we aren’t the only band who experiences these risks by any means. This isn’t a woe-is-me type of answer. There is a positive to this too. We noticed we have some incredible bonds with other bands and with listeners who embody these things too. We fucking love that, and it’s worth all the risk.
This LP features guest appearances by household names Bryan Funck, Emily McWilliams, Scot Moriarty, and Blake Harrison (Rest in Peace). How did you choose your guests, and how did you fit them into your vision?
Picking them was easy, they are all AMAZING musicians and creatives. I look up to Bryan and Emily for their vocal and lyrical abilities so much. Both of them are masters at their craft. Plus they are my friends and I love them. Blake always always always supported and believed in us. As a noise person, I was constantly blown away by his abilities, so it was, again, an honor having him. He was a super great guy too and we all love him. And Scot is not only the recording and mixing engineer we go to and trust to do a killer job, which he does, he’s our family. We have him on almost every record so we have to continue the tradition because we enjoy his vocal style and him as a person.
Metal in the popular imagination has long been associated with male chauvinism, political conservatism, and hostility to People of Color and Queer folks. The modern generation seems to be rewriting that script, and along with bands like Thou, Body Void, Cowardice, Dawn Ray’d, Vile Creature, and Terminal Nation, Sunrot is a huge leader in that shift. Can you talk about the power of metal as a channel for politics of liberation?
Wow, it’s an honor to be associated with every one of the bands you just mentioned. We are humbled to be looked at as helping that shift. Metal can be a great conduit to inspire change and the radicalization of liberation ideals. It’s loud and extreme and passionate and exciting most of the time. Those things are all great and give way for the messages to be just those things too. It’s a wild time to be alive, and we literally can’t be quiet about it without feeling like we are a bunch of centrist apolitical chads. We also get a lot of hate for being political, but we don’t really give a fuck. We’ve had NSBM Nazi piss babies try to fuck with us, and it’s hilarious and very affirming for us as a band of anti-capitalistic, anti-imperialist leftists, not like liberal and democrat fake left, actual radical left. Point being: be as loud as you want about liberation and community building, haters are gonna hate, but all art is inherently political, so fuck it. A better world is possible. It’s our responsibility to fight for it. Assata Shakur says ‘we have nothing to lose but our chains.’
What do you love about metal right now? What should change?
We absolutely love that the monopoly of white cishet men bands and crowds are starting to drastically change to be more inclusive of all types of folks. That’s an absolutely beautiful thing, and being in the scene for it is a gift. We love that the underground scenes–that we are in at least–are still growing and getting stronger and still embracing one another instead of being dicks to each other like we’ve heard some more mainstream scenes are. We love the love we received and give and witness at shows. A camaraderie in loving and or playing heavy music can open up the doors to amazing bonds. It has for us at least.
What should people know about Sunrot? About The Unfailing Rope?
Know that music is everything to us, and if you’ve ever supported us even in the littlest way, we love and appreciate you so much, and it means so much to us. Know that, though we don’t take ourselves very serious, we do take our music serious. Even if you don’t like it, that’s cool, we still work hard at it. So check out any of our releases if you haven’t. Maybe you’ll like it, or maybe not.
The Unfailing Rope is a story of grief mostly. It’s not only screaming into the abyss but watching things you love swirl around and sink down deeper into the abyss. If it had a smell it would smell like a burning 18-wheeler rolled upside down on the side of a highway. If it had a taste it would taste like gasoline used to set a police station on fire. If it had a feel it would feel like hot roofing tar covering your skin. It has visual art that we worked hard with amazing artists on so check that out. And hopefully it sounds authentic and genuine, that’s what really counts
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Carry at least two 4mg doses of Narcan with you daily. You never know when you see someone who may be experiencing an overdose. You can literally save their lives so easily by administering it. It’s legal, it’s safe, is a miracle. There’s an epidemic going on, you can walk into a public restroom and see someone laid out, it could be anyone it could be anywhere. It doesn’t even have to be someone who uses opiates. Fentanyl, which is what’s killing people, is in coke, molly, crack, meth, pressed pills, pretty much anything (except for weed. That’s a lie the DEA made up). No one is going to save us but us. We have to take care of each other. Be a hero not an asshole. If you want to know more about Narcan or where to get free Narcan delivered totally discretely to you and for free, hit us up on our Instagram, Sunrot.music
