So, price I really should preface this review by saying that I am not a metal person. I’m really not. Some of my favorite bands are definitely outside the scope of what is metal and would probably get called “pussy-ass shit” by those within that community I imagine. And before going to this show, I had never been to a “metal” show before. The last time I was into any sort of music that could be called metal was high school and the bands were shitty screamo bands like Avenged Sevenfold and Bullet for My Valentine that I’m sure more “hardcore” metal fans would get a chuckle out of. But, I was young then and I digress.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is that, when I hit up OM’s show at The Sinclair, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. Sure, I looked them up and saw that they were originally formed by members of the doom metal band Sleep. I saw that they were categorized as an experimental drone metal band. But, honestly, it really meant nothing to me in context. I even approached the first long-haired kid I saw waiting outside smoking a cig and asked what I was getting myself into. He simply said “two hours of head bobbing”. (And insisted that I write that into the review. You’re welcome, Kyle.) Not really what I had in mind for my first metal show.
The show started off with the band Watter. Told to me by a bartender at The Sinclair, Watter is made up of members of Grails and Slint. He also mentioned that they were sick during sound check. Watter definitely didn’t disappoint, but, right from the start, I could hear the warning alarms in my head going off. Starting with an intro filled with pure sounds of rain, the band immediately drew comparisons in my mind to more ambient instrumental bands that I was familiar with like God Is An Astronaut and Explosions In The Sky. There were two synths on stage and one of the guitarists even busted out a 12-string acoustic for some songs. Was this what people thought of as a metal band? It sure didn’t sound or even look like one. I didn’t have any problems with Watter at all and they were really solid, but it just didn’t match my preconceptions of what I was expecting. I would normally write it off as a weird pairing, but then OM came on stage.
The first thing I noticed about OM was the Rickenbacker bass that bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros was playing. What an odd thing to see being played at a metal show. But, as OM’s performance went on, I could slowly feel myself getting sucked into a void. A void that I would later learn to be very characteristic of OM and drone metal in general. The pace was very slow and deliberate. A term that I would use to describe the sound of OM would be sludge metal, if sludge metal didn’t already describe a completely different kind of sound. What I mean by sludge metal is that it literally felt like slowly being submerged into a thick and gooey sludge while placed in a deep trance. There were parts of the set that almost felt like being part of a pagan ritual, which is appropriate as the band is named after a Hindi Sanskrit mantra concept. This came through most when vocalist/synth player/guitarist/tambourine player Robert Lowe chimed in on songs.
As my mind was swept away by the pseudo-psychedelic waves OM was sending out, it is difficult to remember specifics in the blur. While being minimalist in setup, all of the band members demonstrated incredible technical prowess at their craft. Riffs and fills impressed in the brief flairs you got from OM. All in all though, it felt initially approachable yet incredibly complex and, for the lack of a better word, drony. There were moments that might irk a normal show-goer. OM spent the absolute minimal amount of time addressing their audience. Briefly thanking the crowd of Boston twice was all the conversation amounted to. There was also no encore performance, something regular OM fans expected but newcomers might have been confused by. These irregularities aside, while I’m not quite convinced I’ve been to a “metal” show yet, OM was heads above what I expected and really opened my mind to what a “metal” show could be.