Om - God is Good

Not satisfied with merely adorning both the inside and back covers with the fact that, yes, this album was recorded by Steve Albini, the only photograph on Om's sleek, black, digipack case depicts the man himself, hunched over his Electrical Audio desk. To allude to the Cult of Albini is especially fitting here thanks to the pseudo-religious, mantra-metal purveyed by this Californian duo, originally risen from the remains of stoner legends Sleep, albeit with the recent departure of founding drummer Chris Hakius. The music itself swings in wide orbits of brooding, faintly Persian bass augmented by various competently recorded percussion and a sitar. Judging from the intensely baffling and mildly ridiculous promotional mumbo jumbo accompanying it, Om see themselves as some kind of ethereal musical pioneers, breaching the edges of perception and the human experience. It might be suggested instead that this slow, slightly dull but richly atmospheric record makes for some decent new-age background ambience.