SUMAC & Moor Mother
The Film
Release Date: Apr 25, 2025
Genre(s): Avant-Garde, Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Metal
Record label: Thrill Jockey
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Album Review: The Film by SUMAC & Moor Mother
Exceptionally Good, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 4.6/5
Because if I knew where cover was I would stay there and never have to run for it. The respective enterprises of SUMAC and Moor Mother share a doomsday cache of tendencies that might act as repellent to both seasoned and unseasoned listeners. Perhaps it was inevitable that their similarities--an uncompromising artistic bent and a fearless compulsion to experiment--would bring them together in a collaboration that I'm sure nobody outside of their camps even considered putting on paper, a collision of antagonistic temperaments that could only lead to chaos and charred ruins, satisfaction guaranteed to violently vary.
Based on rating 8/10
It is in this sense that The Film is a genre-defying work. The joint album by SUMAC and Moor Mother bucks the pitfalls of those collaborative albums that turn into sonic compromise by digging deep on precisely the elements of this combination that will yield the most uncomfortably honest results. For guitar, bass and drum trio SUMAC, that means a reliance on long-form explorations anchored by the full-frequency spectrum of the electric guitar ("Scene 1"), free improvisation within the context of metal instrumentation and tonality ("Camera"), and a monolithic rhythm section that marks space as much as it does time ("Scene 4").
Based on rating 4/5
Turn the appropriate dial back to the Obama-era optimism and growth of 2011, and you'll find the most people had to be angry about was Metallica and Lou Reed's Lulu. It was a daring mix of metal and spoken word most analogous to a slam poetry reading and a thrash metal set being booked in adjacent rooms; it was also fearlessly terrible. Flip the dial to the year signified with a skull and crossbones and you're in the present, with a revisiting of that core premise best described with an enthusiastic sigh.
Opinion: Excellent
The audiences of 20th century music were often split by genre into cliques and factions. Of all the concepts around music, the 21st century seems to have ditched that quicker than a Trump tariff. Few artists embody the comprehensive breadth of genre-less music as masterfully as Moor Mother. Her solo releases are rich and inventive, yet it's her eclectic collaborations which best reveal her intentions.
'The Film'
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