I might be stoned to death by stoner fans (or haters of this pun), but after the infamous Sleep split, I’ve come to prefer High on Fire to Om, despite always knowing Om is aesthetically and spiritually richer and more profound. That might be because of a hitherto undiagnosed ADD which results in a bias against long songs. Had I not been working on my thesis for a good eight hours, I’d have skipped the 19 minute Thebes in a breeze. Yet bearing the droning tamboura of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe aka Lichens enough that holy day, the opener Thebes became a most rewarding song, turning day into night in Egypt where dervishes summon higher spirits. The rest of the album gets even better Meditation is the Practice of Death has an amazing flute part to finish the song. Third song Cremation Ghat I is the star of the album for me, with handclaps, trancy bass and chanting..

Of course you could say I’m partial to Middle Eastern rituals, nomadic tribes & ecstatic dances — which is true, even though I’ve always lived in urban Istanbul and have never experienced any real magic apart from dosing on shrooms. — Reading Foucault’s Pendulum in the summer helped too. And what about the replacement drummer Chris Hakius. He has a huge part in this change of heart as well. He’s from Grails, Portland’s finest portal to Al-Qadim, for God’s sake!. And how can you not see Steve Albini hide behind the mixing board?.. Yes, there are so many factors for this Om record to rock, and it does rock for that matter!

It was always going to be difficult for Om to produce another Pilgrimage, that glowering beast of a record which sat itself down amongst The Wire’s Top 10 of 2007, all dressed in black, muttering weird pseudo-shamanic stuff to itself, and generally being so scary that even Edwin Pouncey couldn’t pluck up the courage to ask it to leave. To their credit, they haven’t. Nothing has surprised me more this year than the opening minutes of Thebes – tambura drone gradually being eaten into by Al Cisneros’s familiar-sounding bass. mapsadaisical

However if you’re a cynical reviewer like Pitchfork’s Cosmo Lee, you could also dismiss it with a 6.0 saying “What was once an implied spirituality, drawn out through trance-like repetition, has become spoon-fed. Perhaps this evolution was inevitable: Like Sleep, Om likely could mine their minimalism only for so long.” Make your own choice ! 4/5

Part of an unforgettable five hour set played by the mighty Om at the Uganda bar in Jerusalem.