Band:	Sunnata
Album:	Chasing Shadows
Style:	Sludge metal, Stoner metal
Release date:	May 2024

01. Chimera
02. Torn
03. At Dusk (Interlude)
04. Wishbone
05. Saviour's Raft
06. Adrift (Reprise)
07. The Tide
08. Hunger
09. Through The Abyss (Interlude)
10. The Sleeper
11. Like Cogs In A Wheel, We're Trapped Between Waves Of Distorted Time

As one of Poland’s more intriguing stoner/doom exports, Sunnata have defied easy categorization across their journey thus far, and with their latest offering, finding the right words to describe them still feels a bit like Chasing Shadows.

Sunnata have never been the most orthodox band associated with the stoner metal scene; Zorya was a monolithic beast that also drew from doom, sludge and psychedelic music, while Outlands incorporated world and raga music alongside post-metal elements. Their previous effort, 2021’s Burning In Heaven, Melting On Earth, continued their adventurous songwriting, with moments of almost abrasive heaviness heard at times, but also some droning passages. I personally found Burning In Heaven, Melting On Earth to be a tad hit-and-miss compared with its 2 predecessors, but Sunnata’s inherent ingenuity shone through frequently. Now, their newest effort, Chasing Shadows, both continues the band’s exploration while also perhaps reverting a bit towards the style on Outlands.

As for how this new album moves closer to Outlands than the record that came before it, the jangling guitar tone that drew me so much to Outlands has been brought back more fully this time around. For want of a better comparison, the predominant semi-clean guitar tone feels like the stoner/psychedelic rock equivalent of what Wayfarer do in black metal; the first interlude on the album, “At Dusk”, is a brief but fitting expo of that particular tonality. Another imperfect comparison is the one I’m inclined to use when discussing the vocals, which largely eschew the more forceful, aggressive tone occasionally used on Burning In Heaven... in favour of almost entirely sticking with the nasal, hazy sound used predominantly on Outlands, a harmonized nasality that takes my mind somewhat to Alice In Chains, with “Adrift” perhaps best demonstrating the arguable similarity.

For further similarities to Outlands, Chasing Shadows pushes two genres a bit more towards the center of its sound compared with Burning In Heaven...: stoner metal and post-metal. Stoner rock/metal isn’t dominant here, but between the driving desert riffing later during “Chimera” and “The Sleeper”, and the thicker stoner doom passages in the likes of “Saviour’s Raft” and “Hunger”, it’s a significant element here. On the post-metal side, it’s more recapturing the dynamic vibe of that genre rather than firm musical similarities, but the likes of “Chimera”, “Torn” and “Wishbone” have protracted dynamic evolutions and/or heavy-soft contrasts.

As for how it represents new territory for Sunnata, some of it comes down to how patient and atmospheric Chasing Shadows is. It’s not an especially heavy album, with opening song “Chimera” gradually intensifying the volume, texture and tempo all the way until the 5-minute mark before it lets loose, and it becomes arguably even less so as it progresses, with lengthy tracks slowly ambling towards metallic heaviness (“Hunger”), outright avoiding a full explosion of metal (“The Tide”), or incorporating substantial ambient introspection (“The Sleeper”).

There’s also some intriguing musical quirks. Midway into “Torn”, after a lengthy build, Sunnata pull everything back and instead revel in some surprisingly melancholic melody with some sad, dainty clean guitar. It’s also the rhythm section that offers unexpected variety. “Wishbone”, which generally has an unusual, almost celestial atmosphere to it, kicks off with a dance-like, almost funky drum rhythm that offers a marked change of pace, and such experimentation is taken even further on the peculiar closing song “Like Cogs In A Wheel, We’re Trapped Between Waves Of Distorted Time”. I’m almost tempted to compare this track to IDM; it has the usual guitar tones (albeit purely in a textural role), but between the tip-tap repetitive hi-hat drum rhythm, the throbbing bass and the electronic layers, it offers a very marked change of pace to close the album.

With all this in mind, how does Chasing Shadows live up to its predecessors? Well, on the one hand, I would say that the experiments here are more convincing than what Sunnata tried with songs like “Crows” on the last album, and particularly when it comes to their exploration of softer sounds. The really extensive, repetitive build and evolution of “Chimera” makes for a cool opening to the album, and I find the full-song exploration of spiritual, meditative sounds on the tantric “The Hide”, with the droning vocals and world percussion, to be quite fascinating.

On the other hand, Chasing Shadows is the band’s longest album to date at 63 minutes, and I do find the back-to-back of its longest songs, “The Hide” and “Hunger”, to start to drag a bit; “The Hide”, as just mentioned, is quite compelling, but “Hunger” coming immediately afterwards does struggle a bit to remain similarly interesting. I also find “Saviour’s Raft” and “The Sleeper” to be a tad inconsistent in how engaging they are, with portions that sag a bit, although both of them make up for it elsewhere.

On the whole, though, Chasing Shadows is another bold step from Sunnata, and another one that mostly comes off. While I would likely veer towards Zorya or Outlands if pressed to pick a Sunnata record to listen to, their efforts since have still had quite a bit going for them, in both ambition and execution.