Sumac Announce 'What One Becomes,' Premiere New Track

BY Gregory AdamsPublished Mar 21, 2016

Following last week's punishing album teaser, Pacific Northwest metal trio Sumac have confirmed the details behind their sophomore LP. As hinted at in the recent trailer, the record is titled What One Becomes, and it touches down June 10 through the group's new label home, Thrill Jockey.

As previously reported, the band holed up in Anacortes, WA's Unknown Studios with producer Kurt Ballou (Converge) to cut the follow-up to 2015 debut, The Deal. A press release now confirms that the new collection features five new "exercises of chaos and control."

Above the album's mix of "muscular hypno-rock" and "musical intensity," vocalist Aaron Turner is said to be examining "internal and personal struggles with anxiety."

"Much of it has to do with questioning fabricated structures of identity and what it means when those structures are destabilized by contact with the outside," Turner said in a statement. "That has been a unnerving process to undergo, but also fruitful in terms of discovering the path to individuation and realized connection with the self. Another facet of experience I'm working to convey is about living with the sustained presence of anxiety, and avoiding reliance on musical devices of cathartic release to provide escape from this condition."

To help plug the upcoming LP, Sumac are streaming "Rigid Man," a 10-minute piece of quaking, slow-mo metal, white noise drones, and tech-metal fury. You'll find the song below, along with the tracklisting to What One Becomes.

The album arrives on double LP, CD and digitally. Pre-order info can be found here.

What One Becomes:

1. Image of Control
2. Rigid Man
3. Clutch of Oblivion
4. Blackout
5. Will to Reach

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