From the beginning, Sumac welcomed abundance. Singer and guitarist Aaron Turner, an omnivorous multidisciplinary artist with some 20 musical projects to his name, feeds all of his storied past into his band with drummer Nick Yacyshyn and bassist Brian Cook. When supergroup Pacific Northwest debuted in 2015 with The agreement, their songs were already hybrids of sludge, hardcore, noise, death metal and more. And each subsequent record sounds more and more unsatisfied with keeping the principles of the heavy rock subgenre pure. Whether constructing or deconstructing, Sumac's open metal is constantly seeking to incorporate more and more.
For all their pleasures, Sumac are veteran musicians in total control, whose improvisations are as precise and technically proficient as their dense, looping songwriting. This has never been as clearly evident as it is The Healer, the trio's fifth full-length. Sumac double down on everything that made them one of the most exciting metal bands in recent memory. Gloomier chords, longer and weirder freeform entanglements, utterly muddled rhythms, seismic gravity and deep humanity at their core – all honed to maximum effect. Their four-song, 76-minute album is a live tour de force, unique in its skill, creativity and clarity of purpose.
But if compelling musicianship is a given by this point in Sumac's career, what does he do The Healer excellent is the knowledge of spatial presence and emotional weight. “World of Light” kicks off its half-hour without articulation as a frenetic flow of drone, low-level hum and Turner's primal rap. The cracking caterwaul he unleashes when he shouts “Shiiine!” sounding more animalistic than any growl could muster. After about 11 minutes, the music begins to rise from the churning soup in slow, deliberate steps. It can feel like some kind of cosmic rebirth or spiritual awakening. Yacyshyn and Cook's brutal rhythm section sometimes falls flat, leaving Turner's guitar and Faith Coloccia's film noise to cut rudimentary shapes out of thin air. Diving headfirst into negative space, Sumac creates tension while revealing what lies beneath each attack.
Often what The Healer reveals is hidden in plain sight. The three main instruments are recorded as if under a microscope, rendering more strongly the natural state of their vibrations from moment to moment. The bass strings rattle across the fretboard like a chained animal. The feedback rattled droning like a wood fire. Switching guitar switches clicks like dry leaves. cymbals pop and sparkle like fractals. The hyper-reality of these peripheral sounds brings a raw psychedelia to the music, which is a rich line. The Healer. “Yellow Dawn,” filled with tumultuous instrumental notes and low-pitched tom patter, opens with the band's most distinctly psychedelic arrangement. It carries through its relentless bends and origami signatures to re-emerge as an unhinged guitar solo that is as much “Dopesmoker” as it is “Black Hole Sun”. Such recognizable and beloved sounds round out the album's more complex stretches in a way that galvanizes both.
