Description:	Standard CD version in gatefold jacket on Constellation
	Format:	CD
	Genre(s):	Post-Rock
	Label:	Constellation
	Price:	£10.29
	Availability:	Dispatched within 2-5 days (on average).

4
...according to our Brian on 28 January 2010.

Efrim Menuck is a dense, tongue twister of a name isn't it? He's the guyzer who co-founded Gobbleseed you Blank Envelope and that. He's more known for fronting the ever-shifting Silver Mt Zion axis these days and they've a grand old release lined up for you Canadian apocalyptic rock headz. It's called 'Kollaps Tradixionales' and is lovingly forged from sturdy tools, both orchestral & rockist, merging chest-beating anthemic surges with a powerful anarcho-folk underbelly. Undeniably powerful & rousing stuff, full blooded, hearty & impassioned. There's bits that could well appeal to the more populist Arcade Fire brigade (but it ain't preachy) fans of Low (but it isn't depressing) and generally fans of quality post-rock (but it ain't boring!) In a sweet deluxe double pack 10" & deluxe CD with trinkets, bribes & posters n' shizle. Smashing!

Love this record? Hate it? Tell us.

Sound clips for Kollaps Tradixionales by Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, Constellation, CST063, £10.29.

What their label says...

*Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (SMZ) returns with its sixth
full-length recording and first since the band's line-up change in
summer 2008.  Following a debut performance as a quintet at All
Tomorrow's Parties in upstate NY, the band embarked on an extensive
European tour through the fall of 2008 and entered the studio during
winter in Montreal.  As/ Kollaps Tradixionales/ demonstrates, the band
has lost none of its raw and frazzled anthemic power and continues to
forge bold new ground in its search for a unique hybrid of punk, blues,
psych, folk and modern orchestral idioms.*

Anchored by the fried electric guitar and plangent voice of band leader
Efrim Menuck (who previously co-founded Godspeed You! Black Emperor )
SMZ continues to slide towards an expansive, loose and blues-inflected
balladry - not so much the inexorably riffing blues shuffle of the title
track from its previous effort,/ 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons/, but a
more languid waltz-time marking the smouldering dynamic arcs of the new
album's opening track "There Is A Light" and gorgeous closer "'Piphany
Rambler".

Whatever the blues influence, the slow burn of SMZ bears little relation
to typical notions of musical seduction, relaxation, or hip-swinging
satisfaction.  What crackles here is much more precarious and anxious,
driven by some of this decade's more devastating lyrical conjurings of
the universal outsider and the antinomies born of 21st century western
psychic oppression. As the lyrics to "There Is A Light" attest, these
are no simple paens to the human spirit, but songs of complex, desperate
and thorny hope.  The words to this song (and so many others too often
poorly understood in the SMZ cannon) should at least give the lie to the
oft-repeated charge that Menuck is some sort of miserablist or glib
pessimist.

And of course there is plenty going on here that ain't no blues at all,
particularly the two middle sides of this double album.  "Metal Bird"
(as it has been known to fans from set lists over the past couple of
years) has been a crowd favorite in concert in recent years, careening
through a throbbing 7/4 template of intertwined ascending and descending
lines, coalescing into unison melodies and pumping breakdowns.  The
sonic references are abundant - from afrobeat to bouzouki music to hard
bop to punk rock.  The three phases of the album's title track on Side
Three are indeed 'traditionals' of a sort, playing on tropes of American
and Anglo-Saxon folk, marching song, sea shanty and hymnal.  Together
they make for perhaps the most overtly enchanting ("Kollapz"), tender
("Collapse") and terrifyingly rapturous ("Kollaps") music on the record.
/*Kollaps Tradixionales*/* is available in three physical formats:*

*Standard CD in a custom gatefold paperboard jacket*

*Deluxe CD - limited to 2500, the Standard CD packaged together with a
6"x9" 16-page perfect-bound art book and 9"x13" poster.*

*Deluxe 2x10" - first pressing limited to 2500, which includes the art
book, a CD copy of the album, and two different posters.*