Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-la-la Band* – Horses In The Sky

Purchased this recently directly from label and found only a cd sized booklet tucked into jacket. The two LPs were inside two poly lined paper sleeves.
Edit: ed label and they said this was a mistake and sent me inserts. Really good folks!

Good quite pressing, very few noises, deep sound.
Perfect for an album llike this.
5 stars

might be a problem with my turntable, but there's a very loud high pitch noise during a lot of the quieter parts of the record.

it's not the way his voice sounds that bugged me, really. it's not the lyrics, either. i mean, sometimes they're a little much; a little draining. take the second track on this record, for example. sure, it sounds like campfire driven folk music compared to the massive orchestral creations of the past, which is a shadow that no former member of gybe! will ever work it's way out of, no matter where they move the exclamation point, how long the hiatus lasts or how different the records released become. mt. zion was never supposed to be gybe!, but, for many fans, there is a linear relation; mt. zion is the band that godspeed became, and maybe in this case the caterpillar is more beautiful than the butterfly.

but i was talking about the second track. it's a gorgeous piece of music, the kind that could find long periods of rotation in the cd player......if it wasn't for the fact that the subject matter is so deathly that listening to it makes you want to cringe. "somewhere, there's a soldier, sleeping in a field....somewhere, there's a mother, a Mother, A MOTHER, A MOTHER!!!!!". i mean, that's enough to make the literal personification of satan (dick cheney) start crying, and i suspect the track would be very effective if performed on, say, the floor of the senate in washington, hell in any country where the of the house would understand what is being said. but, it's maybe a little much for sitting in my apartment and reading a book on geometry, especially considering that i'm a member of the fucking choir.

so, it's not the tone of efrim's voice; he's not any worse than most rock star singers. it's not the lyrics, which i've always related to. it's not the music, which i've always loved. if it was the music without the vocals, i would be left somber, and this would be the plan; but with the music and the lyrics, i'm often times left nearly sobbing, and that is rarely what i really want. there's a line between being a bit of a downer and being downright depressing, and this record manages to cross it, really like no other i've ever heard......which was really remarkable for a week or so before it became a serious drawback to the record. i can still throw on f#a# forever, relax, and feel emotionally drained at the end as i go through the rollercoaster that it is.........this thing just nosedives from the first notes and keeps going down. it's not a rollercoaster ride, it's jumping out of an airplane.

they overdid it on this record, it's too draining, too draining even for me, and that's fucking draining. the first two tracks are the draw of the record, so when i do put it on half of the time i turn it off when they're done. the third track is representative of a genre that, while trendy at the time, i generally have no interest in; given it's draining lyrical content, it usually gets skipped. tracks 4 and 6 are not as strong as the first two, but leave behind the same result whereas track 5 is the lone breath of air in a record that tries to strangulate you. there is definitely something special about seeing 10 people screaming "hang onto each other and every fucking thing you love" all at the same time, which is again very powerful in a small, dark club on the gatineau river in february....

be careful with this. if you don't listen carefully enough, you're likely to find it boring. if you listen too closely, you'll likely need a box of kleenex; and, hence, my end conclusion with mt. zion is the same as it has been for years: this is very, very good guys......but if it was instrumental then i'd listen to it more often because it wouldn't leave me feeling like a piece of shit....