Sunn O)))

This post-Portishead ATP show has long looked on paper potentially a front-runner for gig of the year. Three of the most visceral bands on the planet, together in one venue, with Boris and Sunn O))) not only playing a set each but also playing their mighty 2006 collaboration Altar live for the first – and possibly only – time. For those of us un-able to make the long trip to Minehead this makes up for the disappointment somewhat. Excited? Yes!

Kicking off what turns out to be a very long night,** Earth wander on stage at the unfeasibly early hour of 7.30pm to the strains of some reedy tribal Moroccan music. It's bloody cold outside and the Forum is still filling up as the now expanded touring five-piece tune up and proceed to slo-mo their way through two songs from their forthcoming album. Under stark bright lighting, Dylan Carlson resembles a grizzled rotund trucker as he plucks the chiming opening chords to new track ‘Carrion Crow’. Earth now feels more like a band than ever before. Their live sound is embellished with additional slide guitar coming left of stage from a Hector’s House look-alike and 'vibey' keyboards. The band locks into the mood of songs and proceed to build soundscapes of expansive panoramic beauty. I'm grasped by the realisation that Earth are just one of the finest bands in the world today and that we are just not worthy! However, two songs and 20 minutes in, as the title track of their new album The Bees Made Honey In The Lions Skull slowly lurches to a halt, Carlson waves to the crowd, takes his guitar off and promises to see us again in February. It’s only 7.50pm! Quite rightly the band is called back by the enraptured crowd to play another new track. ‘Hung From The Moon’ is performed and proceeds to completely slay. It's eerily gorgeous and from the tracks aired tonight they have built on and surpassed the sound introduced on their_ Hex (Or Printing in the Infernal Method) _album. I don't want to wish my life away, but roll on their own headline shows next year.

Much scurrying around ensues as sundry stagehands and band members build the Boris rig. Disappointingly Boris's set leaves me wanting a little more tonight. Starting really _slowly with the track _‘Flood’, the band meander until guitarist/bassist Wata unleashes an '80s sounding Clapton-esque solo from his twin-necked headstock-less instrument. It’s all a bit cheesy, but at least lifts the mood. With the band restricted to a short-ish set they need to grab the night by the balls, and they don't. The set lifts as they kick in with Atsuo hammering away at his oversized ride cymbal before finally pounding away on his massive gong. After vaulting his kit and basking in the crowd’s applause he takes a quick trip over the heads of the crowd after a perfectly executed swan dive.

After Boris's set the stage is an even more mad scramble of roadies and band members (in their civvies!) pushing and pulling at walls of amps to get Sunn O)))’s stage ready. The time between sets proves to be the one real complaint of the night. A mammoth wailing wall of stacks is constructed, tables are laden with effects that initially refuse to work until the figure of Stephen O'Malley approaches and then... voila, spookily we have action! Two keyboards are pushed stage right and an upright bass is wheeled on. Damn, I wish I'd brought my earplugs. This is looking ambitious, too. It's now past 9pm and we've not had Sunn 0)))’s set yet.... Can they fit everything in before the inevitable scramble for the last Tube/train? As a fug of dry ice engulfs the stage the cassock-wearing hordes take to the stage, plug in and proceed to unleash a rich sonic drone.

We may be a few weeks away from Christmas but this is pure pantomime. Where's Stephen O'Malley? He's behind you! For all their posturing, costumes, smoke, mirrors and excruciating volume there's something faintly ridiculous about the whole affair... is this some enormous cosmic joke? It's better to not to look too deeply into the meaning of all of this. But saying that the sight of Attila Csihar from Mayhem on stage is still…_ disturbing_. Dressed like a pagan deity or an electric zombie Christmas tree, he is wearing what looks like a crown of thorns on his head and yet more foliage on his one free arm. With his face smeared in white corpse paint and wearing a flowing white smock he intones like a shamanic scarecrow for 40-odd minutes. Playing a track that is aptly named _'Wine & Fog' _this is musical deep vein thrombosis, throbbing and undulating and quite literally attacking you from inside. It's also pretty relaxing in an odd, skull-splitting way. You've just got to surrender yourself to the assault on the senses from the sub bass and the low frequency oscillations. Though not traditionally choreographed, there is something balletic about the way the performers rise and fall with the ebb and flow of the music. Guitars are raised like totems to strike both celebratory poses and to signal peaks and end points to the music.

The pantomime theme is enforced as a curtain is pulled across the front of the stage before the performance of_ Altar_. What could possibly be going on...more amps? A bigger stage set!?

When the curtain is winched up we are in Altar mode. No more amps, but Atsuos drums stage left and added guitars! Trombone too! The set is kicked off sublimely with Jesse Sykes performing perhaps the 'straightest' song in both Sunn O)))’s and Boris's repertoire, 'Sinking Bell'. Looking waif like and fragile, wrapped in her cassock, she scans the crowd bemusedly at first. ‘Sinking Bell’ is executed with precision though, Sykes' voice soaring above the din. A star in her own right (check out her recent album Like Love Lust & The Open Halls of the Soul), her icy fragile Nico-like vocals breathe life into the track. As tracks from Altar are aired Atsuo dishes out some serious gong abuse and during ‘Fried Eagle Mind’ he paces the stage twirling what from my vantage point on the balcony what that looks like nunchucks. If anything the night belongs to the diminutive Japanese drummer. Twice carried across the heads of the crowd and clearly having the time of his life, he leads the songs with his manic percussion. I stagger from the Forum during the final track ‘Etna’, elated but pretty exhausted, feeling that my insides have been sonically altered,_ forever_. Somewhere there is a de-tuned guitar droning feedback, into infinity...