Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra @ Òran Mór, 25 February

These are jaded times. The ironic whooping that greets Efrim Menuck announcing the portentous What We Loved Was Not Enough unflinchingly staples that fact to our foreheads as the band hold up the misanthropic mirror of this sweeping 12 minute lament.

 

“All our children gonna die,” he repeats in numb disbelief as we sip expensive draft piss-water from flimsy plastic cups. With misanthropic insight, he lyrically dissects the startling ease with which our entire culture is being artistically neutered, in turn reducing peerless musical brilliance like A Silver Mount Zion to a lifetime of preaching to the converted in modestly sized venues like Òran Mór.

 

To be blunt, the gig is too quiet. People chatter over heart-wrenching string-work and the atypically thunderous guitar of their recent album Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything never quite grabs our shoulders and shakes some fucking sense into us the way it should. This is music to get lost inside and tonight it is frustratingly short of that magnitude, for the sake of a few lousy decibels. 

 

In addition, the loss of Beckie Foon on cello has contributed to many of the band's stirring previous works such as God Bless Our Dead Marines (much shouted for) being cut from the set, which slightly disappoints given their previous starring roles. Ultimately and predictably, based on an almost flawless reputation as a live band, what should have been transcendent is tonight rendered merely very impressive.