Acid rock comes in two flavors—good trip and bad trip. The former evokes images of Woodstock, big day-glo flowers, beautiful naked people doing blissful, ecstatic dances in the wonders of nature. The latter evokes images of Altamont and the flowers of evil. As for the beautiful naked people they’re the Manson Family, and they’ve come to your house to do the devil’s business.
Austin, Texas’ The Black Angels play bad trip rock. They’re the house band at 10050 Cielo Drive, the real Death Valley ‘69, and they are not groovy. Forget the Grateful Dead’s sunny “China Cat Sunflower.” The Black Angels sound features indecipherable and incantory lyrics buried alive in a fuzz and feedback-drenched drone underlaid by a drum pummel that will not make beautiful naked people want to do blissful, ecstastic dances. It will make them want to barricade themselves in a closet somewhere.
This is drug deal gone fatally south music, the sort of thing you’d expect from a band that got their name from a Velvet Underground song and included Edvard Munch’s “Illness, insanity, and death are the black angels that kept watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life” on the inner jacket of their 2006 debut LP Passover. As for their 2008 follow-up Directions to See a Ghost, it surprises me not a whit that the History Channel saw fit to include some of its songs on their 2009 documentary Manson.
But here’s the thing about acid rock bad trips—some people love them. Especially when a band like The Black Angels are handing out the brown acid. Guitars, lots of them. Effects pedals out the wazoo. All producing a chaotic, wall-of-sound drone drenched in reverb, feedback, rogue electric sitar, and ghostly vocals, all nailed to the world of the living by the drum bash of one Stephanie Bailey, modern psychedelia’s answer to Maureen Tucker.
And surprise, surprise—these Austin doomsayers are on the side of the angels. They’re the good guys and these are protest songs! And they know how to deploy a good hook! A catchy melody! When they’re in the mood, natch. Sometimes they just want to drown you in sound of our own dark history dragging us under.
Space rock? Sure, if by space you’re talking about the Challenger disaster. This is fractured, dystopian music, the sound of a cosmos out of alignment. Set your control for the sun, sure, but what does it sound like when you get close enough to smell the metal melting? It sounds like the cataclysmic “Deer-Ree-Shee,” with its electric sitar situating us smack in the middle of Kali Yuga, the Hindu world age of conflict and sin. (We’re in it now, but don’t panic—it will be over in exactly 426,875 years.) Or “Never/Ever,” with its death chant, drum thump, and reverberating guitar chaos opening up into a total guitar/organ freakout that opens doors The Doors balked at opening.
The ominous (what am I saying? They’re all ominous) “You on the Run” is a real crowd pleaser, all tamborine shake and repetitive guitar riff that gradually builds to an entire swarm of humming, menacing guitars, over which Alex Maas sings “Now you on the run son/Since 1981/You went and did some things/And spoiled the fun.” Are we talking Weather Underground fun here? Maas is vague. But the FBI is definitely interested in your whereabouts.
Some big drums open “Doves,” and lots of guitar reverberation shakes its sweet melody around. Moments of Velvet Underground-like beauty will have you in rapture. Maas is singing in an echo chamber, coming to you from someplace subterranean and dark. On “Science Killer” a humongous bass line gives way to some equally humongous drums—I have no idea what the song’s “about” (that goes for many of these songs) but what I do know is the guitars sound like animals in cages, roaring to be let out, that is when they don’t sound like machines at your door, machines that want to be let in.
“Mission District” is all pound and hum, Jesus and Mary Chain unchained at last to produce a din that is all cymbals and evil guitars and feedback all centered around the cryptic line “You watch your village cave in kid.” You sure do. The powers that be had to destroy it in order to save it.
“18 Years” combines some lovely swirling organ and pounding guitar, stops in order to swallow itself, then continues on its static way, all reverb and tamborine signaling either the beginning of adulthood or the end of everything. Not enough happens by my book—it almost makes me believe the cryptic (and disingenuous) line in the very noisy “Never/Ever” that goes “We don’t fill our song with noise,” but these people will say just about anything, including (also in “Never/Ever”) “You say The Beatles stopped the war/They might have helped to find a cure/But it’s still not over.” It’s never over. If history teaches us anything, it’s that peace is the brief interim it takes to reload your rifles.
Not enough happens in the thumping “Vikings” either—it’s like a miniature version of The Stooges’ “We Will Fall” but doesn’t go on as long, thank Christ. All kinetic energy, no payoff—Maas sings, “On a German warplane/We gonna bomb you ’til Tuesday” but if so where are the explosions? Ah, but maybe excellent follow-up “You in Color” is the explosion, what with its brutal VU introductory guitar riff, which is followed by a guitar and percussion free-for-all with real shake appeal. Meanwhile Maas, way off in the distance, sounds like he’s delivering instructions for how to line up at the gates of Hell.
“The Return” brings The Brian Jonestown Massacre to mind, maybe thanks to all that Stones “woo hoo,” maybe because the vocals sound pureed, but most likely because it’s a remorseless drone with every guitar pushing the song forward until one springs loose and wails and wails, the sole survivor of some far-off village massacre.
The sixteen-minute-plus closer “Snake in the Grass” is a drone rocker that I wish were more raucous. It’s noisy, make no mistake—but with all those guitars and effects pedals at their disposal more could be happening but isn’t. Nor is there some kind of “Sister Ray” storyline running through it to keep you disturbed, or perhaps I should say amused. Throw some sitar in there! A twisted guitar solo a la “I Heard Her Call My Name”! Something! Anything! It’s not a “We Will Fall” bore but it could be so, so much more. “Deer-Ree-Shee” might have been a template; it isn’t.
History is a bad trip. The nightmare from which we are all trying to awake, to paraphrase James Joyce. And as current events prove the better angels of our nature are asleep at the wheel, and The Black Angels gnash their teeth against it. They’ve been railing at the nightmare of history since their first album, with songs like “Young Men Dead” and “The First Vietnamese War.” They do it on this album on songs like the anti-colonialist “Deer-Ree-Shee,” and they’re doing it still.
They’re in touch in with their inner Alamont, and with their black angel death songs they demonstrate they’re very much awake at the wheel. If their music is the sound of Kali Yuga coming down, that doesn’t mean they’re not on the side of the angels.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
