On Disc

Black Mountain

In the Future

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BY Chris Bilton   January 23, 2008 15:01

Editorial Rating:

Picking up where “Druganaut” and all its bottle-toking, Sabbath-­sludging, stoner rock left off, Black Mountain follow their 2005 debut with an entire album that breathes new resin-flavoured life into The Riff. From the geometrically surreal cover art to the inclusion of a 17-minute opus, In the Future positively looms with grandeur, intertwining Jeremy Schmidt’s wheedling keyboard lines with the infallible rhythm section of bassist Matt Camirand and drummer Joshua Wells for a sound that’s as thick as it is spacey. Galloping guitar riffs and evil-sounding songs about not being evil are the oldest tricks in the Tony Iommi textbook, but Black Mountain stake their claim on both (on “Tyrants” and “Evil Ways” respectively) with enough confidence and excitement to make you ask, “Iron Who?” And with the falsetto-inflected “Stay Free” and soaring guitar solos of “Wild Wind” providing appropriate breathing space for the mammoth build-ups of “Wucan” and “Bright Lights,” not to mention the extra attention to Amber Webber’s soothing comedown of a voice, In the Future is the kind of record for which both headphone head trips and beer-funnelling field parties were invented.

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