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Not what I was promised, but still rather cool. - 80%

caspian, November 27th, 2008

On another forum I went to, an Israeli dude proceeded to sing the praises of the show that Om played in Jerusalem (think it was there anyway, how many cities does Israel have?). They played for five hours in a bookstore; going through all their songs then just jamming for ages, group hugs with what was left of the exhausted audience, promises of it being on record and the like. Sounds good eh? Shame that this is nothing like that at all.

Ok it's still pretty cool, but just a decent quality live album and not really anymore more then that. Flight of the Eagle has some truly thunderous drumming- Chris Makius really belts the hell out of his kit, and the bass is truly massive, but damn the vocals are way out of tune. It just ruins the song; what could've otherwise been a massive doomy hypno jam is made really unenjoyable.

Bhima's Theme is pretty cool though; less in the way of vocals -more in tune, lower register so they meld with the bass- and more in the way of monolith doom jams. It's still not the sort of headrush jams-from-kether that I was kind of hoping for, but it is a pretty cool song.

I've thought Om's finest moment was the rather sleepy, slinky drone that was "At Giza", it's a bit of shame there's nothing like that here. Hails to the drummer, though; keeping the beat tight while providing the whole thing with a shimmering, very trancey vibe; this dude is a master of the ride cymbal. Vocals from the first track notwithstanding, though, it's a pretty cool live album, and while Southern Lord may be a bunch of money grubbing bastards- or, more likely, the forum goer was exaggerating a fair bit- or possibly both, this is still a decent enough collection of live songs- and the last with drummaster Chris in the band- so it's worth your while getting if you enjoy Om's sound.