Pan Sonic space explorer Mika Vainio and Sunn 0))) strongarm Stephen O'Malley rock our world to the foundations with this anticipated union of electronics and guitars plus vocals by Alan Dubin (Khanate) and string arrangements from Eyvind Kang. In gestation for some years now, the results are little short of a modern doom masterpiece; a bracing exposition of cold, condensed, rage and stoic passion delivered like a hammer-blow to the head, billowing metallic smoke and blinding with its blackened brilliance. It finds a powerful pressure point between their individual oeuvres, converging a shared sense of restraint, the illest feel for timing and a grasp of sound at the sub-atomic, vibrational level that utterly dominates. Their journey takes place over four extended sections. Khanate vocalist Alan Dubin intensifies the opening and closing chapters with harrowing screams reciting the writings of modernist Russian poet Anna Akhmatova against Vainio's robo-Bonham boulder drums and O'Malley's exorcising riffs whilst the central pieces are eerier, morespaced-out; 'Towards All Thresholds' glistens with the tension of Kang's keening string arrangements before the ogres really awaken in the second half, and on 'Mirror of mirror dreams' Vainio's crushing percussion is forsaken in favour of a more tentative, sustained dramatic intensity.
