It’s been six years since Sunn0))) released their last album, Monoliths & DimensionsI. It’s not like the band’s Stephen O”Malley and Greg Anderson have been sitting around, since they have their label Southern Lord to run, and have collaborated with Scott Walker and Ulver in the past few years. However, on December 4th, the drone collective will release their seventh full length, Kannon. Not surprisingly, it will be on Southern Lord. The album will consist of “three pieces of a triadic whole: ‘Kannon 1, 2 and 3,'” a press release says.

The press release also promises that Kannon is the band’s “most outright ‘metal'” album in years. The album will include contributions from the likes of frequent contributor Attila Csihar, as well as other contributors includingOren Ambarchi, Rex Ritter and Steve Moore, names that don’t mean much to us as Attila’s, but have contributed with Sunn0))) in the past. Will it sound like their always incredibly loud live show? Perhaps, if you go by the bio, but also get ready for some Buddhism:

Kannon is also very close to the cyclical character of mantra which the band has evolved into as a living creature, the enormity of intense sensate detail and manifestation of the live in concert element of Sunn0))), the organism that has flourished, metamorphosed and transcended tremendously over the past ten years. The literal representation of Kannon is as an aspect of Buddha: specifically “goddess of mercy” or “Perceiving the Sounds (or Cries) of the World.” She is also sometimes commonly known as the Guanyin Bodhisattva (Chinese: 觀音菩薩) amongst a plurality of other forms. There is a rich lineage behind this idea tracing back through many Asian belief systems, with as many names and cultural personifications of the idea.

Kannon will be out on Southern Lord on December 4.

[photo: Peter Beste]