A few weeks ago, Southern Lord Records posted a picture on their Facebook page that simply said "Sunn O))) & Ulver Terrestrials." Heavy metal blogs immediately began speculating about the (fairly obvious) meaning of the picture, and today Southern Lord officially made the announcement that Sunn O))) and Ulver will indeed be releasing a collaborative album in 2014.
The album's title is Terrestrials and Southern Lord will be releasing the 3 song collaboration sometime in February 2014. Given Ulver's legendary penchant for drastic musical reinvention and Sunn O)))'s ongoing evolution toward more traditional musical compositions, it's hard to imagine what this album is going to sound like. This isn't an unprecedented, or even surprising, event though. The relationship between these two bands goes back to 2003 when Ulver produced a song for Sunn O))) called "CUTWOODeD" for the White1 album sessions. You can stream "CUTWOODeD" below via Youtube.
It's unlikely that Terrestrials is going to resemble anything from the White1 collaboration which happened a decade ago. Both bands have moved well beyond their respective sounds from that era, but only time will tell what the album has in store for fans. A couple things are certain though – Terrsitrials is going to sound bonkers and a lot of people will get baked out of their gourds listening to it.
