Zitat:"Fire for the hills, pick up speed, and let”™s go..."

The Black Angels don”™t play experimental folk. They don”™t live in Toronto or NYC. They don”™t wear multiple and/or white belts. Pitchforkmedia.com as not written glowing reviews of their music and I can”™t find much written about them on NME or tinymixtapes. Yet, somehow, their self-titled ep climbed into the top 30 of the College Music Journal”™s chart and they play packed shows all across the country. They accomplished this by doing something fewer and fewer bands are doing these days – rocking.

The Black Angels play a fiery version of psychedelic garage rock with a sense of immediacy and impending doom. From the first line on the record (see quote above) until the 18 minute climax of the final track, we are given a feeling that not only are things not alright, but that they could collapse into chaos at any given second. The world is a dark, evil and frightening place littered with war, isolation, loneliness, despair, and the Angels are our tour guides warning us of what fate has in store.

While their music is not truly revolutionary or groundbreaking, it isn”™t boring or unimaginative by any stretch of the imagination. The guitars shift between dark bluesy riffs, low rumbling drones and swirling, soaring walls at times pushing the limits of tone. The percussion is as thundering as a death march, forcing you along the musical path whether or not you want to go. Mesh that with organ flourishes, tambourines, and what is only described as “the drone machine” and you get this slowly moving, ever changing tapestry of sex, violence, and loss that will suck you in and leave you empty.

The truly hypnotic aspect of this record comes from the vocals. More spoken and chanted than sung, Alex Maas folds you in, warms you up and keeps you mesmerized. His voice crawls inside your head and pulls you closer and closer; forcing you to look at the pictures he paints of pointless war, loss of innocence, distance from loved ones, anger, frustration and hope. You fall under his preacher/shaman spell and can”™t look away even if you want to. I don”™t even want to get into how captivating it all is in a live setting”¦

Somehow, Passover feels like both a relic from the 60s as well as a modern rally cry for all generations. Perhaps we should listen.

Zitat:On their second LP, these Austin-anchored psych-rockers amp up the voltage on the lysergic electricity fuelling their sunbaked motorcycle jams. Directions to See a Ghost keeps its feet firmly planted in the great American traditions of the chemical-fueled road trip and its closest confidant, the two-chord firestorm. The more straightforward, heavy blues-rock elements of the Black Angels' previous releases have molted away, leaving a sonic soldier ready to enlist in the drone-psych army alongside the Velvet Underground, the 13th Floor Elevators, Red Krayola, Spacemen 3, and the Psychic Ills.

As an Austin native, I've often wondered what it is about the Texas climate that has induced not only The Black Angels but also everyone from the 13th Floor Elevators to Stars of the Lid to drench their clangy guitars in such hypnotic outer-space reverberations. Is it the heat? The shimmer of mirages on an asphalt horizon in August? The warm throttle of a motorcycle engine underneath an endless arid blue sky?

Whatever the reason, the tradition of Texas psychedelia is on full display on this record, whose greatest strength is that it plays out less like a collection of songs than one epic snakewinding track, very well sequenced, in which the steam generated by high-gear stompers gets a chance to dissipate in incense-laced bliss-outs. The gorgeous fury of amplified drone kicks in from opening menacer "You on the Run" and triumphantly doesn't let up--it gets sped up, slowed down, inverted and transformed enough that although the tracks are at times difficult to discern from one another, the album never feels like it gets caught in a sonic backwater.

It's actually such an effective interplay of difference and repetition that I'm even willing in this case to overlook the occasional sitar appearance. (Guys, we get it, you like psych rock and you kick serious butt at it.) More amusingly, however, and in case the record's Roky Erickson injections are over your head, amid the swirling Sister Ray-organs of "Never/Ever" there's a bit of wanton electric jug piping, just like in the Elevators.

In short, this is the creative peak of the Angels' output to date. Its muscular confidence and stylistic purity make it a must-listen for the psychedelically inclined, as well as an easy candidate for one of the best records of the year.

(17.10.2008, 12:02)padrak schrieb: Mit Post Vietnam Music meine ich halt diese typische Mucke, die auch gerne in Antikriegsfilmen mit dem Thema Vietnam benutzt wird. Und diese Band ist ein perfektes Beispiel dafür, gerade die "Passover"