SUMAC and Moor Mother: The Film

It was only a matter of time before Camae Ayewa (a.k.a. Moor Mother) took the plunge into the raging frontiers of esoteric metal, and there are no more suitable allies than SUMAC. The poet’s profound snapshots of a burning world, tailored for SUMAC’s radical bunker sonics, and together they bulldoze throughout the malaise on their debut collaboration, The Film.

Tugging on the thread that formed the patchwork of her excellent 2024 release, The Great Bailout, Moor Mother weaves more vital strands through it on The Film. While former was centred on the exploration of British colonialism, the latter is a panoramic view of it; Moor Mother proving that even in this modern era, not much has changed. (In her own words on the clinical closing stanza, Scene 5: Breathing Fire, Moor Mother remains, “Sorting through snakes and serpents” in need of that “omen”.)

Alongside SUMAC, The Film is an oasis of ideas that is a collision of brute force. A screaming, black acid nightmare. Except it’s not. It’s a gruesome reality for the marginalised where atrocities are normalised, as framed during the abstract horror of Camera. It’s here where The Film reaches its crescendo, as SUMAC’s tangled barbed-wire assaults provide the kind of minefield matrix for Moor Mother to negotiate. Her cerebral acumen, reaching new levels with narratives that hang on a knife’s edge.

The ceaseless march begins with opening blitzkrieg, Scene 1. SUMAC and Moor Mother render bleak images of these times with a fierce examination of the systematic enslavement that still remains to this day (“All they do is kill / They don’t want us to breathe… All I want is my breath back”). Aaron Turner’s guitars, droning with menace like a low hanging cloud from hell.

Which is where Moor Mother finds herself on Scene 2: The Run. Along the fault lines. Passing ghouls. Passing shadows. The sky, falling. Snapshots of a fever dream to some; an everyday reality to others, and as Turner barks about the shaking and breaking of desert skies, the cacophony of no-wave metal is like a surge against the malevolent bureaucracies that undermine so many.

The swarm of disturbing realities continues on Scene 3. With additional vocals from Kyle Kidd, Moor Mother leads the charge with ominous undertones (“There will be blood in the way of our dreams”), and amid a backdrop of equally brooding guitars and Nick Yacyshyn and Brian Cook’s weighty rhythm section, it forms like an airborne disease (“Legacy of fear wrapped tight… Bones trapped up in closets / Death deposits.”)

There’s no let up on Scene 4. Turner’s riffs, drilling into the earth’s core and as Moor Mother laments on a past where the right to even feel was stolen (“Nobody told me what love was supposed to be / How peace was supposed to be”), the weight behind her words grows stronger the deeper into this journey one travels.

And from those “depths of hell” comes Scene 5: Breathing Fire. The Film’s epic moment, it’s here where Moor Mother’s verbal salvo collides with SUMAC’s brutal sonic maelstrom. In all it’s 16-plus minutes of quicksilver emotional ferocity, Moor Mother’s words glint like a blade thrashing in the moonlight (“Seems like every time there’s a bomb, there’s a round of applause / Seems like every time there’s a bomb, life tends to pause, new cause, new agenda / Can’t befriend a side you don’t know you’re on when the guns get drawn at all directions / These intersections of life got us confused / Blues, clues for evidence for humanity still existing / We in the boxing ring fighting for our lives”).

It’s a moment that drags every emotion out of you and one of the many snapshots that makes The Film the intoxicating marvel it is. No side-stepping. No obfuscation. Moor Mother, picking apart the world’s grotesque patchwork with a performance that is dizzying in all its hairpin turns and razor-sharp vision. And alongside SUMAC’s expansive sonic eruptions, The Film is one the best punk releases you will encounter this year. The results, even bettering what they suggest on paper.

The Film is out Friday via Thrill Jockey. Purchase from Bandcamp.