Black
Mountain

‘In The Future’

(Jagjaguwar)

A bit of history. When Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ crashlanded to the sound of rustling Rizla and fervent beard twiddling in 1973 it brought with it an entirely new perspective on the future of rock music. Led Zep’s mammoth Hobbit-loving-folk-blues opus ‘IV’ was a year out of date.

Woodstock was just a memory, and the flower generation were on the wane, either wilting under the heat of their own cystitis-ridden groins or being unceremoniously mown down by Nixon and his cronies. So for a bit, mega-weirdo space rock bands suddenly seemed like they were going to save the world. Unfortunately, by the late 70s there were fucking hundreds of them. All pedalling moribund synth ‘suites’ and dressed as knights of King Arthur’s Round Table.

So, why should we lament all this crap? Well, it’s simple. With ‘In The Future’, Black Mountain have created an astonishing, riff-laden, interstellar skunk-for-brunch spaz-out, the kind not even attempted since the last sequin fell from Rick Wakeman’s piss-soaked Merlin costume in 1981. It’s the missing link between satanic Led Zep blues bludgeoning riffs and weedy public school moog-noodlery. One track, ‘Bright Lights’, drones on for nearly 17 minutes. SEVENTEEN MINUTES! That’s the combined age of Operator Please! And it’s a vast, tempestuous journey too. One that bursts with Muse-like riffery and Pink Floyd ‘Wish You Were Here’ wig-outiness, before it finally scares you into next week with its séance-like, Genesis-death-ritual drone-out. Then there’s the spiralling-riff-led ‘Wucan’, which is like Creedence and My Morning Jacket trading haymakers in a public lav on Pluto, while the Kuiper-belt-acoustic-balladeering of ‘Stay Free’ sounds like Neil Young being beamed in live from Orion’s codpiece. And there’s no intergalactic let up either, as ‘Tyrants’ is both epic and supermassive, rumbling into earshot like the dark side of the Death Star, waving waah-waah synths and abyss-like, slow-mo Metallica guitar grumbles.

Even the ballads are of earth-swallowing dimensions, with album closer ‘Night Walks’ an eerie, organ-and-vocals symphony so heart-squeezingly soulful that you’re tractor-beamed by Amber Webber’s astonishing vocals and dumped unceremoniously on your butt-cheeks at the end of it.

In this world of two minute Libertines wannabes, ‘In The Future’ is a petrifying, space rock anomaly. Hell, after one listen in a darkened room even Darth Vader would be cowering under the nearest table, red-eyed, wet-trousered and bawling for his mummy. There is songcraft, and there are spacecraft.

Black
Mountain have them both, so fuck history, this is the future…

JJ Dunning