It's easy to see Om Kali Maha Kali as something of a stopgap in the Cult of Fire lexicon, continuing from intriguing if not career best paired albums of Moksha and Nirvana in 2020 and naught but a limited live album (containing a Tibetan prayer flag for each of the lucky 100 physical edition owners!) and a Maniac Butcher cover single last year. A two-song single may not feel like the most vital release, and those who fell into this fascinating but frustrating band's spell thanks to those first couple of masterful releases in the early 2010s will be eager to hear that magic continued.

Alas, this is simply not as good and so will inevitably disappoint. As solid as the two songs here are, mainly more of the Eastern-styled black metal with an almost heavy metal focus on melodic riffing, they are a little drawn-out and unfocused. The opening title track builds very slowly with various ethnic instruments including a sitar before ritualistic chants and shouts begin, pleasant and gripping enough if never quite feeling like a song rather than an extended intro. Jai Maa! is the winner of the two tracks present simply by having some blackened energy to it and building up into a blastbeating frenzy. It takes as much time to build as the title track but does it better, has a satisfying peak, and feels more like a metal song!

Frequent readers will know this writer is happy for bands to bend genre boundaries, and Cult of Fire seem quite unique in their mixing of Eastern religions and black metal, yet the end result has to be satisfying to the ears as well as the spirit. And as interesting as this band can be, we know that they can be much better! Here's hoping this is just a taste of far better things to come; only rabid fans (of Kali or the band) need indulge with this EP.