Sumac – “Rigid Man” (Singles Going Steady)

Emmanuel Elone: “Rigid Man” is post-metal and sludge metal at its core. The pummeling guitar riffs, the grimy, guttural vocals and Brian Cook’s heavy bass playing all start the track well, even if their playing is a bit soft in the beginning for a metal song. However, even though Sumac should have upped the playing, beating the listener into an auditory pulp, they instead decide to make their audience wade through unnecessary Post-Metal, shoegaze-inspired instrumentation. “Rigid Man” doesn’t get heavier, the playing doesn’t change that dramatically throughout the track’s ten-minute runtime, and Aaron Turner’s vocals end up feeling as faux aggressive as David Draiman’s vocals on any Disturbed song. Contrary to its title, “Rigid Man” is a flaccid letdown of a metal song, with a lot of wasted potential to boot. [5/10]

Jordan Blum: Its heavy side is nothing more than standard death metal brutality; they pull it off, but so do countless other bands who sound exactly like this. Fortunately, the ambient section halfway through adds some dynamic variety, but there isn’t much going on with it. It’s just a bit of dissonant feedback and percussion. There are definitely bands out there who do this much better; specifically, Agalloch and Swallow the Sun. [4/10]

Pryor Stroud: The bipolar-metal fretwork of “Rigid Man” could be described as a pulsating entanglement of hot metal; switching from ballistically brutal to placid back to brutal again, Sumac’s guitars are saw-toothed beasts biting at the iron of their cages and, eventually, breaking through. The hardcore-inflected vocals are just as primevally unnerving as the instrumentation that hurdles forward alongside them, and the track as a whole is an engaging exercise in multi-episode post-metal storytelling. [5/10]

Chad Miller: The music was pretty good during the first section, but I loved the ambient sounds starting at the second half. The softer ambient noise didn’t last long, but it was a welcome reprieve from the previous, harsher tone. Overall though, the vocals of “Rigid Man” just felt a little too hyper masculine to me (go figure), sounding like one of the titans in Disney’s Hercules. I couldn’t tell whether I should be amazed or disgusted by it all, and maybe the lyrics would prove my assumptions wrong, but it was extremely hard to understand them. [6/10]

Chris Ingalls: Musically, these guys pack a punch. I mean, it’s a pummeling. I have a low tolerance for what a friend of mine refers to as “Cookie Monster Vocals,” so that’s already a strike against them. But I love it when the whole thing grinds to a halt at the halfway point, and things slowly build back up again. It seems both urgent and unhurried, if that makes sense. [6/10]

Sumac’s new album, What One Becomes, releases 10 June 2016 via Thrill Jockey Records.

SCORE: 5.20