Black Mountain - In The Future

I think if I had millions of dollars and the ability to make movies, I would have Black Mountain on my payroll to score everything I do. It's really hard to blend darker elements of rock, prog and psych, keep it at a mid tempo and still manage to play powerful epic songs. When it fails you get just another shitty rock band. When it works, you get an album like In The Future, perfect in its idea and execution. Critics subsequently lose their minds over it.

If you've never heard this album then I can't really describe it for you, it sounds like everything that has happened in music already, yet there has never been anything like it before. Personally, I like it because it sounds like an album The Melvins (whom I love) would make if they could just focus. Every part feels thought out to the last detail, everything from tone to themes to lyrics to melody to mic placement and production. The drums sound like they were recorded in the hull of a warship on its way to lay waste to the shoreline of its enemies. It also helps that Joshua Wells has the patience of a saint. He knows when to sail along quietly and when to launch the cannons.

Wells can keep time with the best of them, but where he really shines is with his toms. Evil Ways is driven by a twisted version of the Bo-Diddly tom beat, and towards the end we get few glimpses of Wells' skill on his instrument, enough to let us know that he knows what he's doing, but not so much as to come off as pretentious. Tyrants is the second longest and most epic track on the record, and most of the time Wells is stomping along with muddy, thunderous tom beats and rolls. It's never extravagant, always the right amount of flash and focus, and his drumming keeps things interesting for the entire 8 minute song.

Wells is patient with his approach. In Queens Will Pay he spends half of the song in silence, the tension building as you can sense him lurking in the shadows. Finally he attacks, and with a wash of cymbals he conquers the last minute of the track. The whole album is littered with examples of mature, focused musicianship and it deserves all the praise it acquired.

This is an album I will listen to until I'm old and deaf, I just know it.