Sunnata: Faith, Fire, and Finding the Self

While the challenges of the global Coronavirus on the music industry have been stark, with venues unable to open and bands unable to play live worldwide, we’re seeing similar stories beginning to filter through – stories of bands who, being unable to channel their creativity and inspiration through live performances, have adapted and overcome by working on new music and turning to technology to make this possible. Polish doom/sludge acolytes SUNNATA are no exception.

When asked how the pandemic affected them, drummer Robert Ruszczyk acknowledges that the band’s story is all too familiar. “It’s as cliché as it is true to say it’s affected us. I think everyone saw this coming, but no one really believed it until it happened. We had to cancel basically everything we had planned, although some festival appearances were rescheduled, but any other plans just turned to dust.”

Still, Ruszczyk does see a ‘bright side’ of sorts to the unplanned disruptions. “Fun fact about it is that it actually sped up the development of our newest record,” he explains. “We just had nothing else to do as a band, so that freed up the creative powers within.”

As with many bands, the challenges of writing, recording, and sharing ideas were overcome with the use of technology, including home recording and file sharing. “The biggest challenge were the drums, but thanks to a friend of mine I managed to get myself a top notch electronic drum kit for the first time ever,” Ruszczyk explains. “The switch to the new ways of working went pretty smoothly, actually. We found it pretty exciting and definitely more efficient, because instead of meeting on a fixed date in a rehearsal room, we were creative only when we felt inspired to be.”

The result of this boosted productivity and collective focus was SUNNATA‘s fourth full-length, the evocatively titled Burning In Heaven, Melting On Earth. Interestingly for such a thematically weighty record, which deals with ideas of religious fanaticism, the extremes of faith, and the loss of the self, the music came first, with the themes ‘reverse engineered’ from there. “Burning In Heaven, Melting On Earth was first crafted instrumentally,” Ruszczyk explains. “And we decided later what emotions and themes we felt blew out of the sounds.”

Though substantial, these themes aren’t worlds away from what SUNNATA fans will be familiar with from their previous work. “The dangers of religion are nothing new as a lead theme, yet they came to us quite spontaneously,” says Ruszczyk. “The lyrics almost wrote themselves, and we agreed to go with the flow. I don’t want to explain the lyrical concept piece by piece here as we all prefer our listeners to get to them on their own, but the meaning behind the album title nicely pulls them all together – the more blinded by the urge to fan the flame of your faith you are, the more you lose yourself to it – the more you lose as a human being. If the faith is more about fire than earth, it will only do harm.”

The loss of the self is a key theme throughout the record – do the band feel that the age we live in erodes the sense of self, an age of constant social media bombardment and personality realities destabilised by ‘fake news’? “It isn’t hard to lose yourself nowadays, is it?” says Ruszczyk. “We live surrounded by aspirations and needs that aren’t ours, constantly being drugged with perfect lives full of perfect people and everything driven by the pure sense of possession of things. It sounds so banal that it’s hard to believe this actually happens, but it does.”

Through a period of such upheaval and historically ‘unprecedented times’, did SUNNATA draw on any specific inspirations when crafting their new record? “We don’t have to reach out far to become inspired. Just take a look at where Poland is now,” Ruszczyk says. “The last few decades of events worldwide and the situation in Poland easily drives you towards conclusions that religion does no good. We try not to directly transfer any personal stories into our lyrics, but they are reflected here and there for sure.”

It’s not all personal influence and discussions around oppressive religious and political regimes, though; SUNNATA also glean inspiration from traditional heavy metal territory – science fiction. “The strongest cultural reference on the album is definitely the mighty, trippy God Emperor Of Dune, strongly and solely inspired by Frank Herbert’s fourth Dune novel of the same title. A great, philosophical study of tyranny and leadership.”

Though sharing inspiration and themes, Burning In Heaven, Melting On Earth does stand apart from the band’s previous release, 2018’s Outlands, as Ruszczyk explains. “Outlands defined our sound to some extent, and both albums have a lot of similarities. Yet, we use the same tools to tell a bit of a different story. Still spiritual and melancholic, still spacious and atmospheric, but once you deep dive into both, you will feel the difference lies in the emotions they trigger.”

Arguably more so than any other central European nation, Poland has produced some widely renowned extreme metal acts, from BEHEMOTH to MGLA, VADER to BATUSHKA. Do SUNNATA feel like part of a strong, wider Polish metal scene? “Poland seems to be quite famous for our talent for metal music, I can’t argue with that,” Ruszczyk muses. “But we don’t consider ourselves part of the ‘metal’ scene. Maybe that ‘experimental’/’modern’ part of it, closer to the bands that incorporate post-metal, sludge, and drone influences. Other than that, we have found many extreme metal maniacs to be surprisingly conservative and close-minded, which doesn’t resonate well with us. I’m fully confident that there’s a strong, wider ‘scene’, but it feels rather atomized if you look at all the sub-genres.”

The traditional focus for a band that has just released a record is to get out on the road and tour to support it. But these aren’t traditional times, and the immediate future for the live music scene looks very murky. What do SUNNATA have planned next? Will they be out on the road when they’re able to? “We will tour the first time we can, I can tell you that,” says Ruszczyk. “We are already working on something locally, let’s see how it goes in terms of touring further than that.”

Burning In Heaven, Melting On Earth is out now via self-release. 

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