Somatics, a field within body work, originated as a product of a cultural movement in the 18th century that focused on physical activity and strength-building. The principal element of somatics, which has gained prominence in the past decades in wellness culture and therapeutic contexts, is soma. On a surface level, soma is the perceived experience of the body, as distinct from the intellectual response to stimuli in your brain. The divide is easy to grasp. Maybe your brain thinks you’re at ease, but your body sends a different message: It’s tense, shaky, locked up. Our bodies can send us messages that our cerebrum might not be able to parse in the moment. The thought can be unsettling, but it can also be empowering and invigorating to acknowledge that the body can communicate in a way that defies conventional logic and easy explanation.
Somatics can help explain why some bands choose to work at volumes that most people consider dangerous. And they’re especially pertinent when discussing Sunn O))). The American duo of guitarists Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley has been making intoxicatingly loud music since 1997, flanked by a fortress of 100-watt Sunn Model T amplifier heads (the band’s name is self-evident) atop towering stacks of speaker cabinets. They’ve been described as drone metal, noise rock, doom, and ambient, and aside from regular collaborations with vocalists like Attila Csihar and select other heavy-music singers, Sunn O)))’s music is largely instrumental.
“That’s our band practice—hiking in the woods.”—Greg Anderson
Their new, self-titled record certainly is, and there is only one type of instrument present: electric guitar. The album’s six tracks, entirely performed by Anderson and O’Malley, unfurl slowly over the course of roughly 80 minutes; in the most complimentary way, these are not thinking songs—this is music that is perceived and experienced more than it is understood.
Even through headphones, the compositions have a palpable, breathtaking sense of mass and space. Guitar may be the only instrument on the record, but it is not the sole source of sound. Throughout the fourth track, “Mindrolling,” we hear running water, recorded in the woods around Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, Washington. Just northeast of Seattle, a large window in the studio looks out onto the intoxicating perma-green of the Pacific northwest’s forest. You can feel the environment in Sunn O)))’s tracks. The power chords are as towering and knotted as an ancient Douglas fir; the distortion as enveloping and forgiving as the forest floor; the feedback as deep and powerful as the Pacific. This is music to listen to while lying back, spread-eagled, on a cliff face in a hard, thrilling wind.
For Anderson and O’Malley, though, the record is evidence of something else, something just as sacred. “It’s really, to me, a representation of my relationship with Stephen,” says Anderson. “I get a good feeling listening to it.”
O’Malley (l) and Anderson, out in the closest thing they have to a practice space.
Photo by Charles Peterson
Sunn O))), the band’s 10th LP, arrives seven years after Pyroclasts. That seems like a long time to most people, remarks O’Malley, but he considers those years a natural part of “the arc of the creative process.” The new record, he says, is like a flower that emerged over the years. The duo worked with producer Brad Wood, sleeping in a farmhouse on the same property as Bear Creek Studio, which is itself housed in an old barn. Anderson and O’Malley would wake up, have coffee, then hike for a few hours in the forest nearby. After lunch, they’d meet up with Wood in the barn to work.
Anderson lives in Los Angeles, while O’Malley lives in Paris. When pandemic restrictions on concerts began to loosen, they started playing shows as a duo as a way to mitigate risk: Plenty of international tours had been thwarted, at great financial loss, by sudden changes in regional gathering restrictions. But the two-piece shows quickly became more than a logistical necessity. They felt fresh and open, says O’Malley, and he and Anderson were coming up with new ideas based on the limitations of only having two guitars onstage. “The fundamental ideas of the ensemble instrumentation were all there in the distortion,” says O’Malley. “I felt like I could hear it clearer in that abstract distortion and saturation. So we’ve continued on.”
“Whenever we play as a duo, it’s somewhat nostalgic,” says Anderson. “I didn’t know that there was another path forward from that. It turns out there was, and that’s what we were really excited about capturing on the recording—the development of what the duo had become.”
“The fundamental ideas of the ensemble instrumentation were all there in the distortion.”—Stephen O’Malley
Anderson brings up the idea of shoshin, a Zen Buddhist idea that celebrates having a beginner’s mind for all things in life. In the context of the band’s post-pandemic creativity, it suggested embracing the joy he felt in the first days of the project, such that the entire process—playing as a duo onstage and in the studio, focusing only on his friendship with O’Malley—felt like an embodiment of shoshin. The two of them felt joy, but they also felt newness, and explored it. That’s why they decided to create a new album: to document this unexpected expansion.
There was little creative preparation to be done; songs would be captured in the moment as living, breathing things. Both Anderson and O’Malley have Model Ts stashed around the world, from Los Angeles, to Paris, to Amsterdam. The 100-watt heads all have different personalities, insists O’Malley, not least because of the different voltages between American and European power supplies and how the transformers respond. They shipped Anderson’s collection—including Marshalls, Fenders, Hiwatts, Soldanos, Ampegs, Oranges, and, naturally, Sunns—from California to Bear Creek, and rented cabinets in Seattle. Wood placed mics everywhere: on each speaker of the 4x12s, around the room, even outside the room. In another area, smaller combos—including a Fender Champ, Deluxe, and Twin—were used for re-amping and running tape effects on solos. The variety of perspectives allowed Wood to sculpt the mass of distortion and create the record’s cavernous spatial signature.
Anderson relied on an Electro-Harmonix “Civil War” Big Muff, paired with his Pro Co RAT, and the band’s own signature pedal, the EarthQuaker Devices Life, to generate his guitar’s pillowy, bottomless low-end across the record. He likens rediscovering the might of the Big Muff, after all these years, to smoking pot or having sex for the first time. “That’s kind of the shoshin concept, too,” he notes. “Playing with the joy that you had when you first started playing, and trying to get back to that. That can be applied to many different elements, including combining a Big Muff with the RAT circuit.” O’Malley, meanwhile, has used the same ZVEX Super Hard On since 1997. Beginner’s mind, indeed.
During a performance at Le Guess Who on November 6, 2025 in Utrecht, Netherlands, Anderson (l) and O’Malley make an offering to the old gods and goddesses of feedback, surrounded by their bandmates—their Sunn Model T heads.
Photo by Claire Alaxandra
Growing up, Anderson remembers seeing the Melvins in their early days, and the physicality of their gigs’ over-the-top volumes moved him. “That’s why I would follow them around like the Grateful Dead,” says Anderson. The same thing happened when he saw My Bloody Valentine in the early ’90s. “Of course you can hear the music, but to feel it in your bones, that was just something special,” he says. “I had a connection there that I got really addicted to. You can’t really get that on a recording, right?”
Part of the reason the band’s new record is self-titled is because it evokes the feeling of Sunn O))) at its most elemental: Anderson and O’Malley, together in a room, making electrifyingly loud compositions with their electric guitars. When the band first began, they weren’t concerned with playing live. Inspired by that mammoth wall of sound, the idea was to simply get in a room with as many amps as they could manage, get high, and play music together. When they caught on to the physical aspect of the project, they began to think about taking it to the realm of live performance. But that’s not an easy thing to do: The logistics of transporting and operating multiple 100-watt stacks are sticky, and even if you figure out how to do it, there are few venues willing to host such a performance. If a club can’t accommodate Sunn’s backline, or if they require acts to abide by a decibel limit, the band won’t play. (Anderson knows their backline is a lot: “It’s a mountain,” he says.) That can cross out certain cities entirely, but it’s non-negotiable. The volume is part of the band.
“I enjoy the aspect of danger, and I feel like a lot of that has been removed from art and music and film,” says Anderson. “I get it, I understand health and safety, but it also sort of bothers me, because then you’re taking that away from people. There are things that can be done to protect yourself. You’ve taken away that choice and that ability for people to experience it. It’s really loud, but it’s not a painful loud. It’s nearly all low end and low frequencies. There’s not that high, ice-pick, piercing sound in what we do. I equate it more to a warm bath. We’re not trying to damage people’s hearing. It’s not this aggressive moment at all. I understand why it could be interpreted that way, but that’s not the case. To me, the music is very soothing, and I’m grateful that people have gotten that and connected with it.
“It is overwhelming, and to be immersed in that, it does have this kind of comical angle to it sometimes,” Anderson continues. “Oftentimes, Stephen and I will laugh and say, ‘This is insane and amazing that we’re in this right now!’ I think that in itself is a reason to celebrate. It has this kind of celebratory atmosphere to it.”
“I enjoy the aspect of danger, and I feel like a lot of that has been removed from art and music and film. I seek out things that have that edge to it.”—Greg Anderson
Anderson is pictured here lifting aloft his main instrument of worship: a goldtop 2005 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe.
Photo by Claire Alaxandra
Greg Anderson’s Gear
Guitar
Amps
- Mid-’70s Sunn Model T
- Sunn 2000S
- Sunn 1200S
- Ampeg SVT “Blueline”
Effects
- Pro Co Turbo RAT (with LM308 chip)
- Electro-Harmonix/Sovtek “Civil War” Big Muff Pi
- EarthQuaker Devices White Light
- EarthQuaker Devices Life Pedal
- Aguilar Octamizer
- Ernie Ball VP JR
- 4-way splitter box
Anderson notes that he and O’Malley have always delighted in pushing the boundaries of their own expectations, to the point of deleting them entirely. That attitude is one of the keys to their longevity. “It sounds cliche, but I keep saying it over and over again, and it’s true: It’s about being open to different possibilities and ideas,” Anderson explains. “That’s why we’ve sustained, and that’s why it continues to be interesting. Every single band in my life that I’ve been involved with had an ending point. But Sunn O))) has transcended a lot of that.”
“Over time, each person grows in innumerable ways and transforms, and their tastes transform, their perception transforms,” says O’Malley. “It’s like you’re constantly shedding possible versions of yourself.” When you rewatch a film that you haven’t seen in five years, it might mean something entirely different to you. “I think that’s one of the strengths of our music, and the longevity of it, too: the openness to not only changing things, but changing the point of view of what it is.”
Onstage, O’Malley turns sound into a physical force with his Travis Bean “Deo Dei” TB1000A.
Photo by Claire Alaxandra
Stephen O’Malley’s Gear
Guitars
- Travis Bean “Deo Dei” TB1000A
- Electrical Guitar Company DS Ghost
Amps
- Sunn Model T
- Ampeg SVT
- Fender Twin Reverb
- Fender Champ
- Hiwatt DR103 Custom 100
- 1952 Supro combo
Effects
- Keeley-modded Pro Co RAT
- J. Rockett Audio Designs Archer
- Pete Cornish G-2
- Pete Cornish P-2
- “Ram’s Head” Big Muff clone
- OTO BIM
- OTO BAM
- Roland RE-201
- Fulltone Tube Tape Echo
- EarthQuaker Devices Black Ash
- Bright Onion Active Splitter Pedal with Phase Switching
- ZVEX Effects Super Hard On
So what exactly does “openness” mean? For Anderson and O’Malley, it’s throwing out the “rules” for being a band. They don’t practice; soundchecks before shows are the closest thing they have to rehearsals, and Anderson admits that he despises conventional “band practice.” He casts the idea of practice in a different light. For he and O’Malley, it’s not about strapping on their guitars and going over ideas together. While they were in Illinois to attend a celebration of life for longtime creative collaborator Steve Albini, the two of them went swimming in Lake Michigan. Being present together, at the memorial, going for a swim—that was practice. While they worked on the new record, they took plenty of hikes together in the Washington woods. “That’s our band practice,” says Anderson. “Hiking in the woods.” It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that communing with their surroundings, being present in their bodies, is central to their creative relationship.
“If I remove the word ‘band’ from ‘band practice,’ it makes more sense,” says O’Malley. “It’s the practice of being together. Music is about relationships and interaction.”
O’Malley continues. “I’m not saying going swimming gives me riff ideas, but when you’re in the waves, it’s quite immersive. Being in Illinois, to celebrate the life of a great master who also happened to be a friend, and then taking time to have pleasure by engaging with the ancient lake, it’s pretty powerful.”
