So much of what heavy music is happens in the set-up. Tommy Iommi found the Black Sabbath sound by using light strings, detuning a few semitones and using P90 pickups. Sunn O))) created speaker arrays that are specifically calibrated to handle certain soundwaves. The Body are a guitar and drum duo that chose two specific sounds and a couple of strategies. Drummer Lee Buford doesn’t always play a beat, or in time, and his drums seem to fall in pitch like an exhale every time he hits them. Guitarist Chip King has a guitar tone that expresses less pitch than the drums do—it simply holds the distortion like a sponge holding water. On I’ve Seen All I Need To See, there is screaming and someone recites poetry, it holds, it falls, it burns, it soothes. It is not really a collection of songs as much as a series of scratches on the walls of a psychic cell. It’s sort of beautiful?

– Sasha Frere-Jones