SUMAC & Moor Mother The Film

Critic's Take

SUMAC and Moor Mother make a bruising, uncompromising record with The Film, and the best songs show why this pairing works so well. The review repeatedly returns to “Scene 1” for its reckonings with slavery and systemic racism, to “Scene 2” for frantic lines about running, and to “Camera” as a highlight about surveillance and noise improv. The narrator's tone is intense and analytical, praising how Sumac's crushing riffs amplify Moor Mother's biting poetry, while noting the album is meant to unsettle rather than entertain. This makes the best tracks on The Film the ones that marry narrative weight with muscular, freeform instrumentation - especially “Scene 1”, “Scene 2”, and “Camera”.

Key Points

• The best song(s) combine Moor Mother's incisive poetry with Sumac's crushing riffs, notably "Scene 1" and "Camera".
• The album's core strengths are its thematic weight, abrasive instrumentation, and ability to unsettle rather than entertain.

Themes

Critic's Take

SUMAC & Moor Mother make The Film feel like an assault and a revelation at once, where the best tracks - notably “Hard Truth (feat. Candice Hoyes)” and “Camera” - distill the record's furious clarity. The reviewer's sentences push and pry, insisting that sound here is medium not image, and that moments like “The Truth is Out There” carry a brutal, pulsing logic. It praises the album's immediacy and complexity without surrendering to neat conclusions, naming particular songs as points where the collaboration's force coheres. This is an album whose best songs reward repeated, attentive listening because they make the sonic overwhelm feel purposeful and pointed.

Key Points

• Hard Truth is best because it distills the collaboration's furious clarity into a focused, striking moment.
• The album's core strength is its sonic immediacy and complex, overwhelming sound used as medium rather than image.

Themes

Critic's Take

In a voice that never lets go, SUMAC & Moor Mother make The Film feel like a visceral, living soundtrack where the best tracks - “Scene 1”, “Camera” and “Scene 5: Breathing Fire” - do the heaviest lifting. Hodgson praises the album's lyricism and blistering instrumentation, noting how “Scene 1” opens with powerful vocals and vivid war imagery, how “Camera” unsettles with repeated commands of "get away", and how “Scene 5: Breathing Fire” closes with a magnificent, hard-hitting groove. The result is relentless, cathartic and unforgettable, a record that demands repeat listens to unpack its intensity and themes.

Key Points

• The best song is "Camera" for its unsettling sampling, blast-beat intensity, and memorable vocal hook.
• The album's core strengths are Moor Mother's dense lyricism and SUMAC's blistering, cathartic instrumentation.

Themes

Critic's Take

In a collision that could have been chaos, SUMAC & Moor Mother craft The Film into a bruising, cinematic statement where the best songs - notably “Scene 2” and “Camera” - act as focal points for both violence and witness. The reviewer’s voice revels in the record's caustic volatility and careful restraint, applauding how Moor Mother’s fierce delivery and Turner's climactic bellow propel tracks like “Scene 2” into visceral apexes while the bleak testimony of “Camera” bears witness to aftermath. This is serious music by serious people, a thematic collage that rewards repeated listening and pins its strongest moments to those standout tracks.

Key Points

• The best song, "Scene 2", is best for its visceral build, Turner’s climactic vocals, and relentless, chaotic apex.
• The album’s core strengths are Moor Mother’s fierce vocal presence, careful restraint in interplay, and a thematic collage confronting violence and media witness.

Themes

Critic's Take

Moor Mother and SUMAC's The Film is a harrowing, essential record where the best tracks - notably “Scene 1”, “The Run” and “Scene 5: Breathing Fire” - crystallize its bleak argument. The reviewer foregrounds Ayewa's outraged spoken-word in “Scene 1” and the panicked, train-like tumult of “The Run” as the album's emotional center. He treats “Scene 3” and “Scene 4” as epiphanic turning points, and the 17-minute “Scene 5: Breathing Fire” as an unforgiving, full-stop finale. The tone is dire but admiring, insisting this collision of post-Afrofuturistic poetry and ruinous noise amounts to one of the year’s most essential listens.

Key Points

• The 17-minute closer "Scene 5: Breathing Fire" is the album's emotional and thematic apex.
• The Film's core strengths are Moor Mother’s outraged spoken-word and SUMAC’s catastrophic noise arrangements, which together make the record essential.

Themes

Critic's Take

Moor Mother and SUMAC make The Film feel like a scorched, cinematic manifesto where the best songs - notably “Camera” and “Scene 2: The Run” - deliver pyrotechnic fury and bleak elegy in equal measure. The reviewer revels in Moor Mother’s volcanic delivery and the band’s Sunn O))) like obliterations, arguing that “Camera” detonates with drum salvos and free jazz apocalypse energy, while “Scene 2: The Run” blares like fire alarms before collapsing into sludge. The closing 16-minute title piece is described as majestic and elegiac, a devastating finale that encapsulates the album’s post-accelerationist, Afrofuturist vision. This is an album whose best tracks are its largest gestures, the moments where Moor Mother’s poetry and SUMAC’s pyrotechnics collide to soundtrack a very present reality.

Key Points

• The best song is the closing 16-minute epic (Scene 5 / title piece) because it magnifies Moor Mother’s despair and SUMAC’s pyrotechnic power into a majestic finale.
• The album’s strengths are its visceral collaboration, cinematic scope, and fusion of free jazz, noise, and post-metal to reflect contemporary reality.

Themes

Critic's Take

SUMAC & Moor Mother make something harrowing and startling on The Film, and the best songs on The Film are those where both acts lock in, especially “Scene 1” and “Scene 5: Breathing Fire”. The opener “Scene 1” lands as a knockout when Ayewa speaks plainly - you feel the shock of voice without manipulation - and the closer “Scene 5: Breathing Fire” delivers the rush when the duo run together. Tracks like “Scene 2: The Run” and “Camera” show the album’s range, from dizzying suites to clear-eyed calls to witness, making these the best tracks on The Film for their blend of fury and clarity.

Key Points

• The best song is the opener “Scene 1” because Ayewa's unmanipulated voice lands as a knockout and frames the album's urgency.
• The album’s core strengths are the volatile alignment between SUMAC’s heavy, experimental metal and Moor Mother’s pointed, poetic delivery.

Themes

Critic's Take

In his measured, analytical voice Tom Piekarski argues that SUMAC & Moor Mother deliver a genuinely genre-defying statement with The Film, and he repeatedly points to best tracks such as “Scene 5: Breathing Fire” and “Scene 2: The Run” as moments where riff and rap collide to greatest effect. He praises the way SUMAC's heavy, full-frequency guitar work underpins Moor Mother's urgent poetry, noting that on “Scene 5: Breathing Fire” the band creates a buoyant pocket for her intensive lyrical flow. Piekarski balances critique and admiration, admitting some meandering in the first half of “Scene 3” but celebrating its explosive second-half payoff. Overall he frames the best tracks on The Film as those that fuse SUMAC's monolithic instrumentation with Moor Mother's uncompromising social diagnostics, producing both harrowing intensity and shards of hope.

Key Points

• The best song is "Scene 5: Breathing Fire" because its vigorous riff creates a rhythmic pocket that lets Moor Mother's lyrics land with traditional hip-hop momentum.
• The album's core strength is the collision of SUMAC's monolithic instrumentation with Moor Mother's uncompromising sociopolitical poetics, producing harrowing intensity and rare hope.

Themes

Critic's Take

Moor Mother and SUMAC return with The Film, a noisy, militant time capsule that feels like a fuller realisation of their political fury rather than a true synthesis of styles. The reviewer's voice settles on the record's abrasive pleasures - praising “Scene 2: The Run”, “Camera” and “Scene 5: Breathing Fire” as the best tracks, spots where Moor Mother’s delivery and SUMAC’s swirling doom lock into a thrilling momentum. There is admiration for the album's intensity, tempered by a bleak refrain that “We’re fucked”, which keeps the praise angled and urgent rather than celebratory. Overall, the reviewer urges listeners to get it while it’s hot, valuing its militancy and human noise even as it underlines the collaboration’s imbalance.

Key Points

• The reviewer names "Scene 2: The Run" the best track for its locked-in momentum between Moor Mother and SUMAC.
• The album’s core strengths are its political fury, militant noise, and the potent combination of Moor Mother’s delivery with SUMAC’s distortion.

Themes