Sunn O))) sunn O)))
Sunn O)))'s sunn O))) re-centers the duo's tectonic drone in a stripped-back, elemental statement that both comforts and unsettles. Across 14 professional reviews the record earned a 77.86/100 consensus score, and critics consistently point to a handful of seismic moments as the best songs on sunn O))) - notably “XXANN
“Mindrolling” is best for its patient dynamics and the way rushing water yields to sustained guitars.
The album’s core strength is its assured drone craft, but its pared-back, collaborator-free production yields limited new ideas.
Best for listeners looking for nature vs. noise and field recordings, starting with Glory Black and XXANN.
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Full consensus notes
Sunn O)))'s sunn O))) re-centers the duo's tectonic drone in a stripped-back, elemental statement that both comforts and unsettles. Across 14 professional reviews the record earned a 77.86/100 consensus score, and critics consistently point to a handful of seismic moments as the best songs on sunn O))) - notably “XXANN”, “Glory Black” and “Mindrolling” - that reward patient, full-volume listening.
Reviewers agree the collection favors minimal collaboration and sparse production choices, letting massive distorted guitar and natural ambience occupy wide, meditative spaces. Many critics describe “XXANN” as an opening roar threaded with field recordings, “Mindrolling” as a centerpiece that folds sampled water into slow-motion feedback, and “Glory Black” as a melancholic finale where unexpected piano punctures the drone. Professional reviews note the record's emphasis on space between notes, the physicality of sound, and a back-to-basics aesthetic that foregrounds landscape and isolation over flashy novelty.
Not everyone is satisfied: some reviewers praise the album as the band’s purest, most uncompromising work, while others find the pared-back approach bordering on familiar territory, with occasional monotony amid the grandeur. The critical consensus suggests sunn O))) is worth listening to for those drawn to drone-metal tradition and immersive ambient textures, offering standout tracks that act as entry points into its slow, geological logic. Below, the full reviews map how critics parsed its contrasts between nature and noise, restraint and overwhelming heft.
Critics' Top Tracks
The standout songs that made critics take notice
Glory Black
8 mentions
"there’s something confounding about the way the piano interlude on Glory Black feels more desolate than the music that surrounds it"— The Guardian
XXANN
7 mentions
"when the first big explosion of bass occurs, two minutes into opener XXANN, it comes accompanied by the sound of a stream and of birdsong"— The Guardian
Mindrolling
6 mentions
"Similar traces of woodland field recordings can be found underneath similarly gargantuan and mercilessly heavy rumble of “Mindrolling"— The Line of Best Fit
there’s something confounding about the way the piano interlude on Glory Black feels more desolate than the music that surrounds it
Track Ratings
How critics rated each track, relative to this album (0-100). Only tracks that made critics feel something are rated.
XXANN
Does Anyone Hear Like Venom?
Butch's Guns
Mindrolling
Everett Moses
Glory Black
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What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 14 critics who reviewed this album
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Critic's Take
Sunn O)))'s self-titled album is an arresting study in contrast, where field recordings and towering guitars converse rather than collide. The review lingers on the best tracks - “XXANN” and “Mindrolling” - as introductions to that ecology, water and birds threading through the distortion. Grant Sharples' prose emphasizes the patience and gradual shifts that make the best songs on sunn O))) so compelling, scenes of rushing water yielding to monstrous guitars and then, quietly, to reprise. Close listens reward patience, and the album's standout pieces show how nature and noise can coexist and reveal unexpected tenderness.
Key Points
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“Mindrolling” is best for its patient dynamics and the way rushing water yields to sustained guitars.
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The album’s core strength is blending field recordings with massive drone to create contrast and moments of reprieve.
Themes
Critic's Take
Sunn O))) return with sunn O))), an album that feels like a homecoming and a reaffirmation of process and power. The best tracks on sunn O))) are immediate: opener “XXANN” gestures toward familiar terrain before warping it, while the quiet revelation “Glory Black” serves as a strikingly emotional finale with submerged piano. Weaver writes with an almost reverent precision about texture and space, making clear why these best songs on sunn O))) stand out as tests of limits rather than mere songs. This is vast, grandiose music that rewards long, patient listening, and those two pieces especially crystallize the album's power.
Key Points
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“Glory Black” is the best song for its submerged piano and emotional, devotional finale.
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The album's core strength is its focus on texture, space, and physicality, achieved by stripping back to the duo.
Themes
Critic's Take
Sunn O)))'s self-titled sunn O))) feels like a back-to-basics triumph, and the review makes clear why listeners asking for the best songs on sunn O))) will point to its opening and closing epics. The opener “XXANN” is praised as an expansive tidal wave of feedback that demands full-volume immersion, while “Glory Black” is noted as one of the lighter, more uplifting tracks that evolves from dark riffs into vibrant pianos. Paul Simpson's prose is measured but admiring, noting the core duo's focused performance and ambient studio touches that make tracks like “Mindrolling” and “Everett Moses” stand out in different ways. This is an album whose best tracks reward patient, loud listening - the kind of heavy, deliberate experience Sunn O))) fans crave.
Key Points
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The best song is "XXANN" because it is described as an expansive, immersive tidal wave demanding full-volume listening.
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The album's core strengths are focused duo performance, back-to-basics production, and incorporation of natural ambient sounds.
Themes
Critic's Take
Sunn O))) asks you to wander, to listen and to project, and on sunn O))) the best songs - “XXANN” and “Glory Black” - do that work with a controlled, humming distortion that feels like a silent therapist. The review’s voice is observational and slyly rhetorical, noting how “XXANN” and “Does Anyone Hear Like Venom?” plant suggestion rather than answer, making them the standouts when you search for the best tracks on sunn O))). Those moments of water, wind and parking-lot incongruity give these songs their uncanny power, so if you ask which are the best songs on sunn O))), start with “XXANN” and “Glory Black” and let the drone do the rest.
Key Points
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The reviewer singles out “XXANN” as the primary standout for its controlled, humming distortion and suggestive power.
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The album’s core strengths are its meditative drone textures, nature imagery, and a mood that prompts personal projection.
Themes
Critic's Take
Sunn O)))’s sunn O))) feels like a geological event, and the best tracks - notably “XXANN” and “Glory Black” - are where that tectonic patience pays off. Janne Oinonen leans into towering metaphors, describing “XXANN” as an opening roar of layered feedback and praising how “Glory Black” dissolves into minimalist piano touches. The review suggests the album’s top tracks reward patient listening, delivering hypnotic texture rather than flashy variety, which answers searches for the best tracks on sunn O))) with those seismic moments. The voice remains admiring and measured, insisting this is the band’s purest, most uncompromising statement yet.
Key Points
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The best song is “XXANN” because its 18-minute layered feedback opening epitomises the album’s tectonic power.
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The album’s core strength is its uncompromising, patient heaviness that rewards immersion with subtle textures and field recordings.
Themes
Critic's Take
Sunn O)))'s self-titled record is presented as a return to basics and, in that voice, the best songs on sunn O))) are the ones that most vividly deliver its landscape-rooted, overwhelming heft. There is real transportive force in “XXANN”, whose opener blossoms with birdsong and stream sounds two minutes in, and in “Mindrolling” and “Does Anyone Hear Like Venom?”, where feedback-strafed heaviness feels euphoric rather than forbidding. “Butch's Guns” earns notice for its ebb and flow, the way the gargantuan sound briefly lapses into silence, and the piano on “Glory Black” is, strangely, more desolate than the surrounding sludge. The reviewer's tone is admiring throughout, framing these tracks as the album's most transporting moments and answering questions about the best tracks on sunn O))) with clear, vivid scenes rather than tidy hooks.
Key Points
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‘‘XXANN’’ is the best track because its opening bass explosion with birdsong recontextualises Sunn O)))’s massive sound and affords genuine escapism.
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The album’s core strength is its pared-back instrumentation married to ambient, landscape-rooted textures that make overwhelming drones feel transportive.
Themes
Critic's Take
Sunn O))) distills a decade-plus of tectonic drone into a patient, elemental statement on sunn O))). The review leans on images of landscape and slow geological motion to explain why “Mindrolling” and “XXANN” feel like centerpieces, songs where running water or familiar slo-mo drones reframe the duo's practice. Olly Thomas keeps a measured, reverent tone - he praises the record's ecological framing and its refusal to be definitive, while still flagging those tracks as the best moments to enter the album. For readers asking about the best songs on sunn O))), the review points to “Mindrolling” and “XXANN” as the most revealing portals into this record's sound world.
Key Points
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The best song, "Mindrolling", is highlighted for opening with recorded running water and anchoring the album in nature.
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The album's core strength is its slow, all-enveloping drone textures that evoke landscape and deep time.
Themes
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Critic's Take
Sunn O))) sound invigorated on sunn O))), a meditative, immersive work where the best tracks reveal themselves in patience and detail. The shorter “Does Anyone Hear Like Venom?” offers a compact, curious payoff while the sprawling “Mindrolling” rewards attentive listening with sampled running water. On the final track “Glory Black” a rollicking piano riff around six minutes punctures the glorious monotony, making it one of the most surprising and memorable moments. Overall, the album’s six songs cohere into an expansive near-80-minute statement that feels both massive and intimate.
Key Points
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“Mindrolling” stands out for its immersive 18-minute sweep and evocative running water sample.
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The album’s core strength is its expansive, meditative drone that balances massive sound with unexpected moments like the piano on “Glory Black.”
Themes
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Critic's Take
Sunn O))) have long trafficked in monolithic drone and on sunn O))) that signature heft is present but diminished, the record offering few fresh revelations. Tom Phelan writes in a measured, slightly disappointed tone, noting that the band’s pared-back approach leaves the album circling familiar territory rather than breaking new ground. He highlights “Everett Moses” as a rare pivot of industrial hiss and “Glory Black” as the clearest reach for their pupil-dilating gravitas, but overall cautions that these moments only briefly lift the album. This framing answers searches for the best tracks on sunn O))) by pointing listeners toward “Glory Black” and “Everett Moses” as the album’s most notable pieces.
Key Points
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The best song is "Glory Black" because it most closely recaptures the band’s pupil-dilating gravitas with piano and noise crescendos.
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The album’s core strength is its assured drone craft, but its pared-back, collaborator-free production yields limited new ideas.