The new album from Black Mountain, Destroyer, out today via Jagjaguwar, is a nice blend of modern indie-pop and near-metal. It's not entirely one or the other, but it's sort of a fun release, and the kind with a lot of odd power.
"Horns Arising" has a nice proto-grunge chug to it, while "Closer to the Edge" is sort of prog-rock. At their best, Black Mountain imbue this stuff with some real menace, like in the acid rock of "Boogie Lover", a hipster take on Sabbath. Black Mountain rarely rawk as much as, say, a band like Fu Manchu who at least fully committed to the silliness of the material. However, Black Mountain do add some moods and textures to things here, with "Pretty Little Lazies" being a nice stroll through the kind of territory mapped out earlier by artists like Ty Segall. Destroyer is, on the whole, an interesting record, and one with enough real riffs to satisfy rockers, even as it's likely to give young people a fairly close approximation of rocking out.
Destroyer by Black Mountain is out today via Jagjaguwar.
More details on Black Mountain via the band's official Facebook page.
[Photo: Magdalena Wosinska]