Black Mountain
In the Future

The musical era we are living in is complicated; little is invented—perhaps because there is little left to invent—and the tendency or convenience to look back, rather than building a bridge to the future, has now become the hallmark of almost all contemporary bands. In this sense, the title of the second album by the Canadians Black Mountain is ironic, as by the end of the album, it sounds more mocking than anything else. "Back To The Future" would have been a more fitting premonition.

In random order, Deep Purple, King Crimson, Grateful Dead, David Bowie, Neil Young, Black Sabbath, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Led Zeppelin, Doors, Siouxsie, Brian Auger, Jefferson Airplane. No, this is not a joke, nor some diabolical futuristic device capable of containing such merchandise. They are simply the stars ripped from the sky by the Canadian quintet to craft an album so complex and multifaceted that it is impossible not to be transported back in time over the fifty-seven minutes of this work which, it is fair to say, greatly engage our senses.

I find it exceedingly tedious and increasingly cloying to dissect the album track by track with the risk of perhaps doing an injustice to the romantic post-psychedelic openings of "Angels," instead of the driving hard rock of the opening track "Stormy High," or to the catacomb-like "Queen Will Plays" where Webber's dark and visionary vibrato evokes the heavy makeup in contrast with the white pale face of early eighties dark bands. And how can we forget the convulsive epic of "Tyrants" which alternates introspective moments with frantic and pounding rock steps, openly citing the fathers of hard rock when they were still in the limbo of innocence. In contrast, "Wucan" with its keyboards as much vintage as cosmic takes us by the hand and accompanies us in a paced yet dark space walk. Do we want to do an injustice to the most blatantly ambitious and overflowing track of the bunch? The psychedelic trip of "Bright Lights": almost seventeen minutes of dense smoky cloak encircle the listener amidst stoner explosions and hallucinatory serene stretches, followed by a long instrumental tail dripping with lysergic acid, interrupted only at the end by Stephen McBean's excruciating screams. The epilogue of an album destined to weigh (how much time will tell) in the future is entrusted to Webber's pure voice to dissolve the tension in the proto-baroque church-like closure of "Night Walks."

A musical rollercoaster appearing more like a compilation rather than the work of a single band with the real possibility of mimicking the sources, which only a great group—as Black Mountain proves to be—can try to rein in without falling into rhetoric. A sea of ideas, an ocean of citations, a sound world to be jealously guarded. A solid, ambitious work with a thousand facets.

These are Black Mountain, standard-bearers of 21st-century neo-psychedelia. Open applause.