BLACK MOUNTAIN

The debut record from this Vancouver-based psychedelic hard rock band, 'Black Mountain' starts the group of the same name on a three album journey that would arguably culminate with a song of theirs being featured on a Spiderman movie soundtrack. In any case, they have remained of interest to the psych rock underground, although if this debut is much of an indicator as to the quality of the rest of their music, I would be hard pressed to figure out why. Over the course of eight tepid tracks, Black Mountain presents themselves as a mix of recycled retro rock riffs and new school indie whine. Although a few of the less songwriting-based elements of the band's sound show a glimmer of promise, 'Black Mountain' has left me feeling doubtful about whether or not checking out the rest of the band's work is worth it at all.

Although travelling back to the 70's or 60's is a fairly stapled trait with so-called progressive rock, there are usually other things going on in the music that make it worth the trip. Black Mountain starts off their album with a plodding indie rock mess of songs, starting with 'Modern Music' and, where the painfully simplistic blues riffs, poorly executed tenor saxophone, and a whiny drone of a vocal performance going off about some equally poor lyrics. Hearing what sounds like a de-clawed Arcade Fire sing a fairly meaningless sequence of numbers makes me cringe, and the male to female vocals here constantly sound like a pathetic knock off of that band.

Luckily, Black Mountain begins to break out of their pathetic retro indie rock sound by the time 'No Hits' rolls around, and while the last three songs are still nothing special, they do show some promise as hymns of retro psychedelia. 'Heart Of Snow' is without a doubt, the greatest thing that the band offers here, a slow and simple acoustic track that finally uses the female vocals somewhat well, and carries some melancholic emotion to it. But with so much throwback hippie nonsense to speak of on the record, there is little to no reason to recommend it to anyone. I can only hope that Black Mountain focuses on their more successful traits with their future albums, or I can expect to write some more negative things about them, if at all.

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