Pitchfork

Metal and drone's rhetoric tends to prize nature as awesome above all, so here goes: if some bands are earthquakes, Om are erosion-- slow, massive, patient. By my count, bassist and vocalist Al Cisneros plays five different notes on Pilgrimage. He takes the notes and puts them in a row, then he turns the row inside out, then he hiccups the notes in patterns so intimate and subtle it's hard to figure out whether they're patterns at all. Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius don't make "stupid" or "smart" music, it's just a lot more detailed and engaging than it immediately appears, which is probably why their audience splits the difference between gobsmacked stoner rock fans and people who like to listen to Steve Reich or Alice Coltrane and stare into rugs.

While rhythm sections tend to play as if periods were the only punctuation mark, Om break space with commas, semicolons, and side clauses-- their storytelling prowess and dramatic timing rival a glacier's or a narcoleptic's. But again, that's not the point. Om is a pointless band, and that's high praise. If Pilgrimage holds a discernable achievement, it's that it forges a sense of intricacy-- and a balance between the crushing and the meditative-- that Om struggled with on Variations on a Theme and 2006's Conference of the Birds. Most of "Bhima's Theme" is bread and butter for head-nodders, but "Pilgrimage" (which opens and closes the record), is shiftier and less stable, accentuated by a bassline that seems to tack extra bars to a phrase if it feels good, not for the sake of metrics. It's not metal and it's not even drone; it's like a heavy folk dance.

A friend recently remarked that he didn't really care for Om because they seemed "unidirectional," which struck me as more of a preference than a criticism. Either way, I sense they're a little different-- not as keen on crushing your fucking solar plexus with the volume-hammer; willing to forgo wonky pagan cover art or brutalist abstraction for a Christian icon; softer, more traditional, older-world. If there's any climax on the record, it's about nine minutes into "Bhima's Theme", when Cisneros blurts out the name "LAZARUS" after a minute of near-silent bass noodling, then disappears. I spit hot tea into my lap. It's hilariously portentous-- Om's not exactly the sound of levity-- but they wear it well: I'm hard pressed to think of many bands that could shatter a song with one word.

Even if it doesn't reach the highs of Conference's "At Giza", Pilgrimage is the most varied and comprehensive album they've made. Another more metal-oriented friend tried to ward me off Om with suggestions of bands he thought made similar music, but better: Earth, Corruption; he even tried me on Khanate. All passably gigantic, sure, but none of them sounded as delicate or transportive as Om. When my friend said "unidirectional," I couldn't help but think of how "Pilgrimage" does sound kinda like Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun".