2. A Silver Mt. Zion
Related to Godspeed You! Black Emperor
6 albums
1999-Present
A friend of mine turned me onto GY!BE, who I really dig, and ASM was the next step. They're damn good. Godspeed is 25-minute song post-rock, ASM kinda switches between shorter songs at 4 minutes to longer songs at 15. So far, I've listened through their 2000 debut,
He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corners Of Our Rooms..., and
Horses in the Sky which came out in 2005. Both are tremendous, moving compositions. Painstaking (in a good way) to listen to. They'll ruin your day well and good.
There's really nothing I can hate on A Silver Mt. Zion about, at least not anything they did on these albums. The songwriting is amazing; "God Bless Our Dead Marines" and "Teddy Roosevelt's Guns", both from
Horses in the Sky are two of my favorite songs ever.
He Has Left Us Alone as a whole is even greater than that. "Broken Chords Can Sing A Little", "13 Angels Standing Guard 'round the Side of Your Bed" and "For Wanda" are damn poignant.
I really have to work my way through their other albums because these two are really great. Just phenomenal. GY!BE is apocalyptic; A Silver Mt. Zion is more serene, but no less depressing.