The Black Angels
Passover
However you arrange your record collection these days, you will have no trouble fitting this lot in. Whether it's by mood, genre or simply alphabetical you'll find this Austin based group sits nicely between Black Sabbath, Black Mountain and The Black Keys. The only other reference that I didn't mention as it kinda ruins my theory is The Velvet Underground. This band take their name from a Velvet classic, "The Black Angels Death Song" and at times the spirit of Nico is summoned to great effect.
These guys aren't trying to rewrite musical history but Passover is a damn good listen none the less. Album opener Young Men Dead rolls in with a dirty piece of plodding, monotone guitar accompanied by the lyric, "Head for the hills, pick up steel on your way" and the mood is set for a gloomy, psychedelic and often heavy rock delight.
The Sniper At The Gates Of Heaven follows a structure that is employed throughout most of this album, it marches into view like the advancing armies of Mordor and builds the sense of impending doom magnificently with the help of Alex Maas' anxious and highly strung vocals while Bloodhounds On My Trail evokes The Velvets' world of drugged out, paranoid psychedelic but soon leaves it behind as the volume is notched up and off we plod to far rockier shores.
It's not all this satisfying though, The First Vietnamese War sounds like John Goodman's funeral speech to Donny in The Big Lebowski with it's simplistic and relentless "War Is Hell" subject matter. This sentiment is continued on the albums closing hidden acoustic track where we get the lyrics "He's fighting in the Iraq war, what for?" and it's a shame that this highly fulfilling album ends with the repetition of "Somebody please stop that war." But these complaints are few and far between and don't come close to ruining an album that satisfyingly ticks all the rock boxes.
7th Aug 2006 - Tumblr
3.5