Coming to your town, sure gon' shake it on down.
"Evil Ways" from In the Future (2008)
Rock City, Vancouver, BC! Black Mountain is one of the easiest in the Top 10 to categorize. They rock. From its Hipgnosis-inspired cover art, to the music contained, In the Future (2008) mines the deep veins of classic rock and brings them together and into the now.
An immediate and strong album package. It's got your Zeppelinite, your soundtrack acoustic Floyd, your Bowie-isms. A little prog, some Steppenwolfian heavy metal organ thunder (embedded above), even a little funky drone flavoring...
Not sure if I've mentioned this, but if a band's going to have vocals, I really like multiple lead voices. Different singers for different songs, singing together, trading off different parts in a single song... Black Mountain does it all, and their two lead vocalists are male and female. The diverse styles drawn from, along with the voice combinations, bring enough variety. Some of the more downtempo songs take a little longer to dig into, but I don't want total spoonfeeding.
Finally, once you've gotten down with the main act, not many others can compare on the side project front. Male singer/guitarist's more low-key, up-mooded Pink Mountaintops. The drummer, female singer and her sister's indie-folk Lightning Dust. The drummer also plays in Blood Meridian with members of Pink Mountaintops and Lightning Dust. And finally (so far), the keyboardist's old-school synthscapes as Sinoia Caves. He also did all the art design for In the Future and Zombi's Spirit Animal, 2009.
So check it out! Okay, that's it for 2008... up next: 2007.
Another Top 10, I think it's just albums, and I predict there will be less writing per. (2006 in November?)
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