The Black Angels - Passover
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Music CD Cover
Artist: The Black AngelsEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-04-11
Music Label: Light In The Attic
Soundtracks:
- Young Men Dead
- The First Vietnamese War
- The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven
- The Prodigal Sun
- Black Grease
- Manipulation
- Empire
- Better Off Alone
- Bloodhounds on My Trail
- Call to Arms
Free Music Notes for Passover
Free Music Review: Don't Pass This One Over - A Detailed Look At "Passover"
Hit: 5 Stars
From note one, "Young Men Dead" begins softly with a simple reverberated guitar riff that opens up to an explosion of repititious drone, fuzzy haze, and primal beats. Direct from Texas, Austin's Black Angels passenger with the city's late 1960's garage psych predocessors The 13th Floor Elevators. Darker and more blunt than The Elevators, The Black Angels drill on the rich grounds of the underbelly of psychedelia and social/political commentary. Singer Alex Maas spouts war-themed lyrics with a robotic Jim Morrison/Nico delivery that reminds of General Patton's speech to rally his troops (see the opening movie scene in "Patton" 1970). There are legitimate comparrisons to The Doors and The Velvet Underground found through the singing and music respectively, although The Black Angels do offer more musical diversity to eliminate the pigeon hole fate as "Passover" charges on.
"Passover" does not let up on the audio assualts of jagged guitars, smart & ambient keyboards, and straight-ahead drumming for the next several tracks. "The First Vietnam War" makes intelligent undertoned jabs at the current Iraq quagmire with a napalm attack of grinding reverb. "Sniper At The Gates Of Heaven" offers agnostic suggestions on the reality of a heavenless world with quick doses of Indian-like chants and pounding percussion. "Prodigal Son" fits Velvet Underground expirimentation with echoed tamborines while Maas sings more with vocal sounds than words. And "Black Grease", the radio-friendliest of all ten tracks, offers something to sing along with the next time you find yourself thinking about a past lover who has taught you things, but ultimately let you down with failed emotional attachements.
"Manipulation" acts as an opener to a whole other sound that The Black Angels are capable of. While guitarist Christian Bland sings the verses and leaves Mass to the song's loose chorus hook, it could be the most 60's-sounding song on the whole record, envoking images of Warhol's Factory smeared by Ken Kasey.
"Empire" is musically the lightest, most tribal, and darkest song to surface - chisled with Spacemen 3 guitar effects and lyrics that make you wonder if the song is about a hospitalized world leader who is mentally ill. Hmmmmmm.
But "Passover" takes a steer from psychedelia on "Better Off Alone", coupling slowed-down surf rock tendancies with a bummer trip country dirge. That feeling slides into the fast-paced "Bloodhounds On my Trail", providing the most upbeat music on "Passover".
The album is capped with a finger-pointing Lou Reed-ish eight minute freak out that once again features Bland and Maas tag-teaming the vocals. With firing squad lyrical accusations toward upperclass business family men, it is obvious that wife and child abandonment issues while money holds this father's real lust for life is the underlining theme. The song builds to an etheral finish of peaking guitar washes of drone and takes its time dying softly into several minutes of silence only to give way to an unlisted and rather sloppy (compared to the well-crafted tracks which are listed) folk song about questioning the Iraq war.
Given the music released thus far in 2006, The Black Angles have managed to amaze me more than any other band. Their sound is not original, yet it builds on concepts that many bands from the past thirty plus years have failed to execute from shallow creativity and near-sighted vision. If The Velvet Underground were resurrected circa 1967 into the year 2006, handed updated guitar effects and modern keyboard technologies, their music would without doubt sound similar to what The Black Angels are successfully accomplishing.
p.s. These cats are even better live - t'aint no jive.
Passover Poster
Japanese pressing of their 2006 album includes three bonus tracks. Formed in 2004 and hailing from the mescaline-infused outskirts of Austin, Texas, this gang of misfits has been on the road non-stop since their birth, performing at such venues as Sin-e, The Empty Bottle, and Spaceland. This debut full-length from The Black Angels comes down as strong as the 'Day of Judgment' drone of organist Jennifer Raines. 3D. 2008.Every now and again a band capable of not just capturing the spirit of a bygone era but portraying it with uncanny authenticity and accuracy arrives, and in an era where music lovers seem increasingly ravenous for psychedelic-inflected rock, Austin's the Black Angels are precisely that act. Following on the heels of their recent Turn On, Tune In, Drone Out EP, the quintet transports listeners to a land of napalm-bright LSD flashbacks with an elegantly unholy sound that proves both eerie and ethereal. "Young Men Dead" and "The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven" walk the line between celebratory dance and grief-filled dirge. These tracks unnerve the conscious mind with unsettling drones and vocals that seem to have emerged from some parallel universe where the struggle, strife, promise, and even the seedy underbelly of the Love Generation lives on in each primal drum beat and louder-than-loud bent note from a guitar that could not have been built anywhere on Earth, but has been drenched with the sweat and blood of a generation on the verge of either victory or collapse. If there is an act in American popular music with a future brighter and vaster than the cosmos, the Black Angels are it. --Jedd Beaudoin
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