Perhaps the finest band on a very, very fine Canadian label, Constellation Records,
Silver Mount Zion returns with
13 Blues for Thirteen Moons, their first record since the near-masterpiece
Horses in the Sky. Released in 2005, that record established
Silver Mount Zion as a musical force all its own, existing beyond any sort of stylistic boundaries. On their follow-up, the band luckily, remarkably, continue to grow, evolve, and get even better. Things start in a deceptively familiar fashion on "1,000,000 Died to Make This Sound" (which is billed as track 13, preceded by 70 seconds of random, high-pitched sounds divided into 12 short tracks) strings are plucked quietly, a choir is singing softly, and
Efrim Menuck enters with his usual quivering vocals, until some three minutes in, when everything quietly fades away. And then it starts for real. After a brief pause, the whole band kicks in with an astounding, utterly unexpected fervor and volume, and the song is immediately transformed into a huge, soaring rock anthem reaching up to the skies. Frankly, it's quite a thrill to hear
Silver Mount Zion kick up a maelstrom of sound like that; simply put, they have never rocked that hard, or that convincingly, in their entire career.