 | Black Mountain |
Black Mountain is finally back with a new album, this one called Wilderness Heart with quite the album cover to accompany it (see above). I really, really loved their last album In The Future and this was one of my most anticipated releases coming up this year. While some of that trademark riff-iness remains in for this album, the band has taken a bit of a different, more subdued direction on this album, opting for more slow acid-laced jams and less riff-ed out early 70s metal riffs. They still deliver some great songs, but the more subdued and meandering tone of the album doesn’t quite work as well for the band and they are still at their strongest on the old school riff tracks.
The first two songs on the album are also probably the album’s best and also are a good illustration of the different, more exploratory and subdued tone of this album. The opener, “The Hair Song”, is a psychedelic free-wheeling jam song that has awesome hooks and choruses thrown throughout it, but it certainly steers a little bit away from the heavier material we have heard in the past from this band. The second track, “Old Fangs”, brings that heavy-ness back in a big and awesome way and it is the strongest heavy track on the album with a killer bridge and hook plus that ethereal organ. The album is largely played out between these two sides of the band, although the subdued songs on the album can tend more into the acid-folk range than “The Hair Song”, they still play about equally with each temperment of song.
While some of these slower songs are really fantastic (the aforementioned “The Hair Song”, “The Space Of Your Mind” notably), it makes the album more of a space-out acid-jam fest than a straightforward, full-on heavy riff rock album with some ballad-y moments thrown in. This album plays both sides of the fence equally almost. And the heavy songs here are not as focused and delightfully smooth as the songs on the last album were generally. So there are some real high points here, and they do put together some very strong heavy tracks (“Old Fangs” is awesome, “Let Spirits Ride” is in this vein as well), the album overall as a whole feels a little less coherent and a bit more on the trippy side than they have been before.
While for a large part it works, it doesn’t quite reach the high, high points of their last album. Their last album is a tough act to follow, and fans of the band should find more to like here, but it doesn’t feel quite as perfect and quite as well molded as before. There are some great, great songs here, but it doesn’t quite hit that dizzying high of In The Future. That being said, for some acid-stained 70s throwback rock, you still have a hard time beating this Canadian collective for their inventiveness and strong songs. Still a very good album and still worth checking out.
