Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra makes stirring, majestic rock music with a strong orchestral sound that rivals anything else today. Few bands deliver live performances as powerful as Silver Mt. Zion’s, and the ensemble proved its excellence once again with its show Saturday (Jan. 28) at Lincoln Hall. It wasn’t just the beautiful sound of those violins melding with the guitar, drums and upright bass to create epic peaks of sound — it was also the way all five of the musicians joined their voices together in otherworldly hymns.
The band (which includes members of the older and recently revived group Godspeed You! Black Emperor) played three new songs that carry on Silver Mt. Zion’s tradition of making long, dramatic pieces of music: “Take Away These Early Grave Blues,” “The State Itself Did Not Agree” and “What We Loved Is Not Enough.” That last song, along with another new one called “Psalms 99,” were for sale at the merch table in a limited-edition set of two 7-inchs — the songs are so long that each is split up into Parts 1 and 2 on these singles. Now there’s something you don’t see too often. Silver Mt. Zion played eight songs Saturday night. Few, if any, clocked in at less than 10 minutes, but every minute felt absolutely necessary.
