Heads up: Sannhet EP ...

After Capa, here is another cool band devoted to a powerful type of experimental “blackgaze” and coming from USA, in particular “originally created in bedrooms between Brooklyn and Philadelphia”. I’m dealing with Sannhet, an instrumental trio including Christopher Todd on drums and samples, John Refano on guitar and loopers and, since late 2011, AJ Annunziata on bass guitar. The band was started in 2007 by Todd and Refano as an experimental recording project and released their first album “Different Words / Different Meanings” in early 2008. You can stream the album on the Bancamp page of the band and you’ll be able to appreciate, if you are into it, long suites encompassing post-metal, noise, electronics and shoegaze. After a short hiatus, Sannhet regrouped in 2010 and steered towards a “more raw, organic two-piece guitar and drums live band relying heavily upon looper pedals, field recordings and tube amplification to create a fierce wall of droning, heavy, noisy, epic “instru-metal”. Sannhet’s EP, released in mid 2011, is the expression of the band’s new direction. Fall 2011 saw the addition of a third member on bass guitar, AJ Annunziata.

Sannhet’s EP is quite a short one (not even 12 minutes), and is available via Bandcamp as digital as well as tape versions, plus t-shirts. Short release, yes, but definitely impressive. And, above all, so much different from what came before. By looking at the tags on Bandcamp for both Sannhet’s releases one may not see that much difference. But there’s a substantial component added to the new tracks: black metal. And a new, more “physical” attitude towards the sounds, for sure. If compared to the minimalistic cover art, the music in this EP is overwhelming. But the subject of the cover art, a tower riddled with bullet holes, is more than appropriate because the alienating and punishing sounds here tell about a war. The vocal and noise samples employed here are minimal, compared to the past release, but effective: the whistle of air bombers at the end of the opening track Haunches, the badly tuned radio in track Moral and the distorted chant of a prayer in a mosque for the closing track Invisible Wounds. Sannhet’s new style is heavy, bleak, dark, tragic and impressively atmospheric thanks to a skillful mixing of progressive black metal and shoegaze plus post-metal dissonance and noise. All is kept together by a monster tribal drumming in the background. Atmospheres may vary across the full range between alienating, dismal, dreamy to cosmic hallucinated, the latter reminding me one of my fave song by Pink Floyd, Astronomy Domine (listen to Moral …).  Riffs are slow- to mid-paced and deeply reverbered. They may produce painful monotonic howls or engage furious battles with the crushing drumming in some complicate patterns that turn into explosions.

By listening to these three compact tracks, I can’t but catch echoes of Enslaved and Alcest, Cobalt and even some Oranssi Pazuzu. Someone else will hear some other bands, for sure. So I am sincerely impressed by this new, more metallic, darker and more brutal version of Sannhet.  A complaint. The Ep is far too short, especially for the fact that this band has been having a substantial live activity in “drippy basement bars” in Brooklyn (e.g., at the Saint Vitus Bar)  together with none less than Bison BC, Primitive Weapons, Liturgy, Black Cobra, Gaza, Elitist, Bezoar, The Atlas Moth, etc. But I read somewhere that the band is busy in writing their second full length album. So … dark clouds are piling up in your horizon …

Words: Marilena Moroni

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Sannhet - Haunches (directed by AJ Annunziata)