BLACK MOUNTAIN - IN THE FUTURE

I downloaded the new Black Mountain album yesterday because I couldn’t wait to be shaken by the latest heaviness. The same heaviness that shook me on Sunset Blvd. three years ago. I was not disappointed by the heaviness. In fact, while listening to it, I was surprised to have that strange uncontrollable desire to rock out – something I hadn’t felt since listening to the Grinderman album that came out last year or playing Guitar Hero for the first time this winter.

Though Black Sabbath and Led Zepplin are the obvious touchstones, don’t let the Rock turn you away from giving In the Future a chance, as there are subtler dynamics at play on this album that most people would be quick to skip over due to the length of the tracks (which are for the most part nothing short of massive). That is not to say that In the Future isn’t an epic album, because it certainly is, but that it has great songs with really strong quiet moments. Unlike an Ozzie or Thin Lizzy album, where the ballads are teasers for the bombast of the “Crazy Train”s, the distortion-less songs on In the Future are fully realized, with their own emotional truths at the center, most likely due to the front and center presence of Amber Webber who provides cock-rock blocking counterweight to Stephen McBean’s block-rocking shockery.

I think many people will look at reviews of In the Future and be turned away by the allusions to the resurgence of “hipster metal” and 70’s and 80’s “hard rock” of late, but unlike say Cheeseburger or Wolfmother or The Darkness where there is more tongue in cheek than wherever it normally goes, Black Mountain don’t approach the heavy-rock genres they mine with irony. Rather, they build from the same foundations that heavy metal was forged from: oversaturated blues and tribal incantations, to create their own sound that is on par with those guitar rock behemoths rather than kneeling at their altars.