Black Mountain
Wilderness Heart
Jagjaguwar
Emerging from the deep woods of Canada’s rocky west coast is Black Mountain, and not unlike the California day-glo pranksters of decades ago, they’re amped, hairy, and unpredictable, a reclusive gang armed with a mind-fuck manifesto to take you further. Black Mountain’s power and glory psych-rock is usually a strange and wonderful trip down various avenues of electric mayhem, but Wilderness Heart, their third full-length, showcases the band at their most diverse. While songs like the title track, “Old Fangs,” and “Roller Coaster” bring the Iron Butterfly-meets-Bigelf heavy organ and nightmare doom heard on 2008′s In the Future, it’s the acid-fried acoustic songs “Radiant Hearts,” “Buried By the Blues,” “The Way to Gone,” “The Space of Your Mind,” and “Sadie” that shine brightest, each one of ‘em full of stardust and soul. If that ain’t enough for ya, opener “The Hair Song” is a beautifully-crafted, Zeppelin-inspired slide shaker, while “Let Spirits Ride” is built like a hot rod, running fast on MC5 fuzz and NWOBHM riffs. There’s not one song on Wilderness Hearts that doesn’t benefit from the killer chemistry of vocal duo Stephen McBean and Amber Webber, and there’s not one song on Wilderness Heart that’s not far-out and really fucking good.
Check out two videos — “Old Fangs” and “The Hair Song” — from Wilderness Heart! Cool fact: The video for “The Hair Song” contains footage shot in and around my hometown, and my old stomping ground, Call the Office. Dig it!
Posted by Jeff on Sep 11 2010 in Reviews
Tags: acid-fried, acoustic, Amber Webber, amped, beautiful, Bigelf heavy, Black Mountain, Buried By the Blues, Call the Office, Canada, day-glo, doom, electric, far-out, Further, fuzz, gang, glory, hairy, hot rod, In the Future, Iron Butterfly, Jagjaguwar, Led Zeppelin, Let Spirits Ride, manifesto, mayhem, MC5, mind-fuck, nightmare, NWOBHM, Old Fangs, organ, Power, pranksters, psychedelic rock, Radiant Hearts, reclusive, riffs, Roller Coaster, Sadie, shaker, slide, soul, stardust, Stephen McBean, strange, The Hair Song, The Space of Your Mind, The Way to Gone, unpredictable, Wilderness Heart, wonderful
We’ve run into a real string of bad movies lately, haven’t we? Not that I thought Parasomnia was going to be any different, and not that you haven’t come to expect bad movie write-ups from me, but when you hoe the low budget road, there’s usually some awesome surprises waiting for you. Besides, this one was written and directed by William Malone, the same dude who did House on Haunted Hill and Feardotcom (yeah, okay, also not great but at least these were legitimate theatrical releases and starred people like Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, and Stephen Dorff), so I suppose one could gleam a glimmer of horror hope from this one. But all hope was quickly dashed and there weren’t any surprises waiting for me. Only a mundane, low budget fantasy lost in a shitty dream world of love, blood, and madness.