a much more musically diverse record than their first release as they seem to be more comfortable with experimentation. clearly, black mountain are working with a larger palette of sounds here, with the most noticeable changes being the more involved roles of vocalist amber webber and keyboardist jeremy schmidt. webber invokes siouxsie sioux throughout the album, particularly on “bright lights” as she howls and haunts her way through the song, while the rest of the band does their best to rock harder than led zeppelin and blue cheer. when a band wears their influences on their sleeves it can be at times a very dangerous move, but on in the future black mountain do it confidently and manage to make this music their own. their songs still have a sleepy, druggy quality to them that occupied most of their self-titled release, but they don’t suffer from the same kind of monotony that similar bands like dead meadow do, as black mountain appropriately couple such moments with driving, powerful, hard rock.
Filed under: Album Review , 2008, black mountain, in the future
