Five months after the issue of Sunn O)))'s Life Metal, Greg Anderson and Stephen O' Malley deliver Pyroclasts, a companion album (not a follow-up). This set was recorded during the same two-week sessions that produced its predecessor, though the process was a bit different. At the beginning and end of each day's recording at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio in Chicago, Sunn O))) and its collaborators -- cellist/halldorophonist Hildur Guðnadóttir, electric baritone guitarist Tim Midyett (Silkworm), and synthesist Tos Nieuwenhuizen (Beaver, God), engaged in stopwatch-timed 12-minute modal drone improvisations; they were akin to musical meditation practices that Albini recorded on two-inch tape. According to the liner essay the motivation was "…To connect/reconnect, liberate the creative mind a bit and greet each other and the space through the practice of sound immersion."
While the sonic differences between these albums may initially seem subtle, they are distinct. Life Metal is more projective in its use of drone and sonic effect. Contrast its opener, "Between Sleipnir's Breaths" (with its representative sounds of Odin's steed snorting and galloping in the maelstrom), with the even lower-tuned, overamped roil of "Frost (C)" here. Where the former offers a sense of forward movement, the latter undulates, its waves flowing in and out of one another in a transcendent present. It does reach catharsis when the mode shifts to a different octave, but it does so by breathing, not pulsing. "Kingdoms (G)" emerges from near silence with a single tone. The other instruments, sounds, and textures, add to its tonal center, which remains unchanged for the duration. "Ampliphædies (E)," is wide open, the sound of feedback, distortion, and air entwining amid low-register hum and churn. As one passage begins its descent into silence, another emerges seemingly without assertion, dovetailing with restrained power to become a distorted temple chant by electric cello and guitars. The multi-octave, feedback-and-guitar-twinned note that introduces "Ascension (A)" recalls the horizontal drone sonorities in Giacinto Scelsi's first quartet in Four Pieces, or his baritone saxophone epilogue in Kya. As it emerges, its dynamic finds space and elasticity in a seeming stasis that is actually quite deceptive; while it never leaves the note, the microtones and overtones add a depth and dimension that alter the perceptions of movement and time. Pyroclasts is its predecessor's doppelganger: an aural image inseparable from its host, down to the glorious cover paintings by Samantha Keely Smith. The forward evolution of Life Metal has been balanced and extended into a mercurial spirit through formless, receptive interaction on Pyroclasts.