<img src="http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee136/anuransol/bm-sml.jpg" alt="" />
<strong>By Andrew William Smith, Editor
2008.1</strong>
Born in 2004, Vancouver?s Black Mountain brings something special to the rock landscape. From early efforts that turned people like Chris Martin and Wayne Coyne into serious fans, the band earns its status as a collective of psychedelic superheroes. Like the self-titled debut that instantly invoked comparisons to Black Sabbath, the feverish follow-up plums the depths of rock?s timeless recipe for skin-tingling religiosity, dishing out equal doses of heartfelt insurrection, hefty imagination, and heady intoxication.<!--more-->
Kicking open with the rugged sludge of ?Stormy High? and sailing on the ?Wild Wind? all the way until the memorable and engine-cooling coda of ?Night Walks,? <em>In The Future</em> is best understood as a rite (or recording) of passage for the protagonists and the audience. In a revolutionary and spiritual sense, Black Mountain brings us this piece of sacred plastic to reclaim and epitomize the project pioneered and lost by progressive rock: album as quest. (For some background in which to base this kind of critical listening approach, I highly recommend Erik Davis?s amazing interpretation of Led Zeppelin?s fourth record, featured in the ?33 1/3? series published by Continuum.)
In this juggernaut of jagged epiphanies, vocalist and guitarist Stephen McBean is an all-compassing rock wizard who can fly, clutching the feathers of an ambiguous future drenched in light and dark. We can see the moon even as McBean flies past the setting sun like a heavy metal Harry Potter rescuing the hippogriff Buckbeak from authority?s axe.
<img src="http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee136/anuransol/bm-cover.jpg" border="0" alt="" />
In a delicate balance of experimental noodling and epic brooding, the first best record of 2008 breaks open the heads of the headphone wearing listeners while furthering the eerie end-times moodiness that so dominated the music of 2007. ?We?ve all seen tomorrow,? the lyrics implore, ?and there?s truth to what they say.? Even as the throng threatens to forget tomorrow and just gather around the bong, this mind-expanding miasma comes from a band on a mission.
Those who have followed Black Mountain?s career recognize the crew?s social conscience from the much-publicized day-job that some members have had helping heroin addicts get free, clean, and legal injections from an organization called Insite. On this recent release, virtually every track can be read as part of a larger morality play, with lyrics on the level of a Willliam Blake or Allen Ginsberg, decrying war and the chickenhawks that wage them. But this guitar army doesn?t stuff flowers into guns, and the epic battle to ?Stay Free? in a world of ?Tyrants? is fought with a rock as musically radical as its rhetoric. While something this fraught with archetypes could easily fall into some serious traps, the magical mix never fails or even falters. Jeremy Schmidt?s organs and synths keep the groove thing patently proggy and trippy, even a little dirty (at least as dirty as four days without a bath at Bonnaroo where this ensemble better get booked in June).
And balancing McBean, Amber Webber really shines a feminine light on the battlefield with her vocals that immediately inspire name-checking the likes of Sandy Denny and Grace Slick. (Think Eowyn in <em>Return of the King</em>, with Webber playing Miranda Otto to McBean?s version of Viggo Mortensen). Webber disarms the ?demons? that ?may be hiding in our shadows? on ?Queens Will Play,? providing one of the many places where this album surpasses good and great, rocking right into the realms of a supernatural classic.
<img src="http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee136/anuransol/Bm-ban.jpg" border="0" alt="" />
By the time listeners get lost in the seriously sonic sanitarium of the seventeen minute mind-screw of ?Bright Lights,? some might be begging for mercy: either let this end or let me listen to something this lysergic without end. But even the epic celluloid trilogy of Peter Jackon?s take on Tolkien had to end just as our readerly time at Hogwarts recently ended. Even a record this ready to climb a stairway to heaven has to finish. And it does, after ten tracks and roughly an hour of harrowing musical mythology made for the ear-bleeding hobbit holes of rock nerds everywhere. (And then, the ravaged yet ravenous listener finds the three bonus tracks tucked away on another piece of plastic!)
Critics have already called the title of this blistering new disc of stoner blessings an effort in irony. Sure, putting the acid back in acid rock would always already come with certain risks. With a musical ambiance so authentically retro, why did they call it <em>In The Future</em>? Did they conjure our puzzled reaction or are they just messing with us?
But here?s my theory: in making retro so ridiculously relevant, Black Mountain have embraced the true nature of the frightening future against the backdrop of too much nostalgia-driven drivel. In this media orgy era, fans not only live in the past, they fund a zillion dollar industry devoted to re-creating the past, writ larger than the decadent drugged-out lives our grey-haired gurus once lived.
Too bad all the teenyboppers embracing classic rock reunions and getting their collective skivvies all in a knot about seeing Gramps Plant and Great Uncle Page own a stadium or two will probably never listen to the new Black Mountain record or see the band live in close quarters for a tenth of the money it?ll cost to hope to hear ?No Quarter? from the nosebleeds. (Don?t get me wrong, I want to see the Zep show as much as all of you?let?s just have some perspective on it.)
For now, Black Mountain will be ?keeping faith down in the underground? (as Mc Bean bellows on ?Angels?), and among the fans who will see them up close in clubs instead of from afar, who can complain?
Black Mountain?s music mounts the mythic towers of epic everything to proclaim the future, and the future is the past, a promising while problematic prognosis that could only be reached through this witchy brew of badass prog gnosis. With ticket prices for most of the shows at a modest ten bucks, don?t wait to the last minute to snag yours. Rather than bemoan missing some major rock moment back in the day, make certain you make plans to catch this one.
<em>In The Future</em> was released by Jagjaguwar on January 22, 2008. For more information, visit
<a href="http://blackmountainarmy.com" target="_blank">http://blackmountainarmy.com</a>
Photos courtesy of Jagjaguwar
<a href="http://www.jagjaguwar.com/" target="_blank">http://www.jagjaguwar.com/</a>
<strong>By Andrew William Smith, Editor
2008.1</strong>
Born in 2004, Vancouver?s Black Mountain brings something special to the rock landscape. From early efforts that turned people like Chris Martin and Wayne Coyne into serious fans, the band earns its status as a collective of psychedelic superheroes. Like the self-titled debut that instantly invoked comparisons to Black Sabbath, the feverish follow-up plums the depths of rock?s timeless recipe for skin-tingling religiosity, dishing out equal doses of heartfelt insurrection, hefty imagination, and heady intoxication.<!--more-->
Kicking open with the rugged sludge of ?Stormy High? and sailing on the ?Wild Wind? all the way until the memorable and engine-cooling coda of ?Night Walks,? <em>In The Future</em> is best understood as a rite (or recording) of passage for the protagonists and the audience. In a revolutionary and spiritual sense, Black Mountain brings us this piece of sacred plastic to reclaim and epitomize the project pioneered and lost by progressive rock: album as quest. (For some background in which to base this kind of critical listening approach, I highly recommend Erik Davis?s amazing interpretation of Led Zeppelin?s fourth record, featured in the ?33 1/3? series published by Continuum.)
In this juggernaut of jagged epiphanies, vocalist and guitarist Stephen McBean is an all-compassing rock wizard who can fly, clutching the feathers of an ambiguous future drenched in light and dark. We can see the moon even as McBean flies past the setting sun like a heavy metal Harry Potter rescuing the hippogriff Buckbeak from authority?s axe.
<img src="http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee136/anuransol/bm-cover.jpg" border="0" alt="" />
In a delicate balance of experimental noodling and epic brooding, the first best record of 2008 breaks open the heads of the headphone wearing listeners while furthering the eerie end-times moodiness that so dominated the music of 2007. ?We?ve all seen tomorrow,? the lyrics implore, ?and there?s truth to what they say.? Even as the throng threatens to forget tomorrow and just gather around the bong, this mind-expanding miasma comes from a band on a mission.
Those who have followed Black Mountain?s career recognize the crew?s social conscience from the much-publicized day-job that some members have had helping heroin addicts get free, clean, and legal injections from an organization called Insite. On this recent release, virtually every track can be read as part of a larger morality play, with lyrics on the level of a Willliam Blake or Allen Ginsberg, decrying war and the chickenhawks that wage them. But this guitar army doesn?t stuff flowers into guns, and the epic battle to ?Stay Free? in a world of ?Tyrants? is fought with a rock as musically radical as its rhetoric. While something this fraught with archetypes could easily fall into some serious traps, the magical mix never fails or even falters. Jeremy Schmidt?s organs and synths keep the groove thing patently proggy and trippy, even a little dirty (at least as dirty as four days without a bath at Bonnaroo where this ensemble better get booked in June).
And balancing McBean, Amber Webber really shines a feminine light on the battlefield with her vocals that immediately inspire name-checking the likes of Sandy Denny and Grace Slick. (Think Eowyn in <em>Return of the King</em>, with Webber playing Miranda Otto to McBean?s version of Viggo Mortensen). Webber disarms the ?demons? that ?may be hiding in our shadows? on ?Queens Will Play,? providing one of the many places where this album surpasses good and great, rocking right into the realms of a supernatural classic.
<img src="http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee136/anuransol/Bm-ban.jpg" border="0" alt="" />
By the time listeners get lost in the seriously sonic sanitarium of the seventeen minute mind-screw of ?Bright Lights,? some might be begging for mercy: either let this end or let me listen to something this lysergic without end. But even the epic celluloid trilogy of Peter Jackon?s take on Tolkien had to end just as our readerly time at Hogwarts recently ended. Even a record this ready to climb a stairway to heaven has to finish. And it does, after ten tracks and roughly an hour of harrowing musical mythology made for the ear-bleeding hobbit holes of rock nerds everywhere. (And then, the ravaged yet ravenous listener finds the three bonus tracks tucked away on another piece of plastic!)
Critics have already called the title of this blistering new disc of stoner blessings an effort in irony. Sure, putting the acid back in acid rock would always already come with certain risks. With a musical ambiance so authentically retro, why did they call it <em>In The Future</em>? Did they conjure our puzzled reaction or are they just messing with us?
But here?s my theory: in making retro so ridiculously relevant, Black Mountain have embraced the true nature of the frightening future against the backdrop of too much nostalgia-driven drivel. In this media orgy era, fans not only live in the past, they fund a zillion dollar industry devoted to re-creating the past, writ larger than the decadent drugged-out lives our grey-haired gurus once lived.
Too bad all the teenyboppers embracing classic rock reunions and getting their collective skivvies all in a knot about seeing Gramps Plant and Great Uncle Page own a stadium or two will probably never listen to the new Black Mountain record or see the band live in close quarters for a tenth of the money it?ll cost to hope to hear ?No Quarter? from the nosebleeds. (Don?t get me wrong, I want to see the Zep show as much as all of you?let?s just have some perspective on it.)
For now, Black Mountain will be ?keeping faith down in the underground? (as Mc Bean bellows on ?Angels?), and among the fans who will see them up close in clubs instead of from afar, who can complain?
Black Mountain?s music mounts the mythic towers of epic everything to proclaim the future, and the future is the past, a promising while problematic prognosis that could only be reached through this witchy brew of badass prog gnosis. With ticket prices for most of the shows at a modest ten bucks, don?t wait to the last minute to snag yours. Rather than bemoan missing some major rock moment back in the day, make certain you make plans to catch this one.
<em>In The Future</em> was released by Jagjaguwar on January 22, 2008. For more information, visit
<a href="http://blackmountainarmy.com" target="_blank">http://blackmountainarmy.com</a>
Photos courtesy of Jagjaguwar
<a href="http://www.jagjaguwar.com/" target="_blank">http://www.jagjaguwar.com/</a>
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