Sunn O))) has made a remarkable career in the last decade based on this. They’re certainly not the first to take what is essentially heavy metal power riffing and slow it down to a house-rumbling crawl, but by eschewing most other complexities that could dilute the end result they have become icons of this particular sub-genre alongside their heroes, Earth. On the whole the concept yields a humorless and potentially boring type of music, meant to stir up that 16 rpm nostalgia and not much more, and thus it’s no surprise that Sunn O))) have continued to refine and expand their approach over the course of the decade, ultimately achieving universal critical acclaim with their breakthrough sixth album Monoliths & Dimensions in 2009. But when they started, as with their second release ØØ Void in 2000, it does seem that their primary goal—if the myriad of online user reviews gives any real indication—was to simply exercise the best subwoofers on the market.

All of this explains why handing over the recordings to Nurse With Wound in 2007 to produce a remix of the record to be included in a limited Japanese reissue at the time was not only welcome, but necessary. Nurse With Wound have long been known as a singular entity in music, equally revered for their noisy surrealist soundscapes as they are for trance-inducing ambient electronics, and according to Sunn’s Stephen O’Malley, it was the latter treatment they were expecting the recordings to receive. But what they got is no mere alternate version of the record; The Iron Soul of Nothing actually complements the original recordings perfectly, giving ØØ Void its missing other half while deepening and complicating it tremendously. Nurse With Wound took on the task of tilling the content of the original record, turning what was previously hidden inside-out, exposing the “soul” of the recording in their own unique way.

“Dysnystaxis” uses its drones as a drill bit to penetrate the barren exterior, finding a melody of squandered hope reverberating somewhere deep within. The two-part “Ra at Dawn” approximates the boat ride across an infernal lava flow, featuring languid strings like resonating foghorns underneath the sounds of steamy billows collecting and releasing. Halfway along the trip, “Ash on the Trees” represents the heart of the record and is easily the most human of the pieces, both chaotic and ugly. Built around the guest vocals of Goatsnake’s Pete Stahl, which were buried in the original mix as a killer moment of the track “NN O)))”, it expresses vague intonations of suffering (e.g. “agony’s kiss, taken as pleasure”) but what matters isn’t what is said, just that it is now audible. This is indeed the soul of the void. After breaking down into a maelstrom of broken glass, the record returns to “Ra at Dawn,” descending into a lifeless series of pulsating tones and, finally, some incoherent buzzing that resolves into light.

The result is a record that easily stands on its own, recalling some latter-day Coil but most frequently Nurse With Wound’s own classic “Swansong,” which gradually uncovered passages of gentle elevator music between huge waves of white noise. And yet, the record is far better when played back to back with the original Sunn O))) album, as if looking back into the fiery eyes of those 16 rpm hellfire demons and seeing the emotional core of the violence and the rage.

In 2011, Editions Mego finally gave The Iron Soul of Nothing its own rightful standalone release on vinyl and digital download. It is still paired with ØØ Void in its reissued CD incarnation via Sunn O)))’s label Southern Lord.