Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning! One of the best albums I've heard in years, 9 Mar 2007
I ordered this due to it being recommended to me by Amazon and because of all the good reviews on this site. It came throught he post on Wednesday and its been on a continuous loop ever since both at home and in the car. From the opening chord this just blew me away. It usually takes a couple of listens for me to feel enamoured over any album but this one.....well!
As others have already said you can hear the influences that Black Angels liberally borrow from - Velvet Underground obviously, Joy Division (especially one particular track), and The Doors (especially Alex Maas' vocals - a spit for Jim Morrison if ever there was one). But...when music sounds this good who cares where its borrowed from!
The entire album is played with a relentless drum beat (like the Velvets - Black Angels have a female drummer - however unlike the Velvets she seems intent on knocking the skins off her drumset). It doesn't let up until the very last track.
The opener "Young Men Dead" is a superb track - one of the best opening tracks I can remember. Okay this, like the entire album is anti-war (anti Iraq war lets say) but even if you don't agree with the message you can't help being pulled in by this song.
The whole album is accompanied by an incessant drone à la Velvet Underground at their best. This connects the songs throughout and like the drumming give you the feeling that this is one piece of work. Sometimes you listen to an album and feel that a load of songs have been thrown together for the sake of filling up space. With 'Passover' there's none of this - this is undeniably a single, coherent piece of work.
Now to Joy Division. Its completely striking but "Manipulation" just sounds for HALF of the song that its straight out of the Ian Curtis canon. But at the same time this is so different. The song is played with a verse sung in English accent with the chorus interjected by Alex Maas which brings a completely different pace and sound. This is a great song just like the rest of the album.
I don't know how they'll follow this, but I wish them every success. Superb! Oh and by the way turn it up loud to really appreciate.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Passing over, 3 Feb 2007
If Jim Morrison had ever gotten depressed and started a pyschedelic hard-rock/blues band, then the result might sound something like Black Angels.
And this fledgling Austin band introduced their fuzzy-rock, blues-toned rock in their first full-length album, "Passover." It takes a little while to fully sink in, like the effects of a good wine -- but when it does, this haunting rock music is intoxicating.
It opens with a bluesy guitar playing, only to burst into a hypnotically fuzzy melody, full of drums and bass. "We'll fly for the hills/pick up your feet, let's go/we'll head for the hills/pick up steel on your way," Alex Maas intones in his rough, compelling voice. "Fire for the hills, pick up speed, and lets go..."
It continues with the slow-burning, mellotron-edged "The First Vietnamese War," a dark rocker that slowly pulls listeners deeper into its orbit. With the songs that follow, the Black Angels plunge into taut blues-rock, ghostly hard-rock, fuzzy bass melodies, cycling electric guitars, supernatural dirges, and even a plaintive song about "he's fighting in the Iraq war/what for?"
The Black Angels aren't really typical psychedelica, hard rock or blues. Instead, they pursue a ghostly, shamanic sound that is sort of a mad, sizzly mishmash of all of the above. It's like the Velvet Underground, Clinic, the Doors and Syd Barrett all returned to jam together in the desert.
Droning and cycling guitars and the fuzzy bass are the most prominent instruments here, locked into kinetic riffs and Ouroborous loops, and twisted up in some very solid drums. The effect is hypnotic. The psychedelic, slightly softer edge comes from some very subtle organ and keyboard, but not in a terribly prominent way.
Maas has the perfect voice for this hard, complex music -- he wails, growls, and murmurs seductively. He sounds like a weathebeaten, rough-voiced shaman who is telling us his visions. And grim visions they are -- war, love, anguish and pain. "You're just so kind/The eagle with red wine/You made me see that bright eye/Between me and time..."
The Black Angels are one of those bands that aren't as well-known as they deserve to be -- brilliant fusion of rock, blues and psychedelic anguish. Absolutely stunning.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Velvet Underground Re-Born, 5 Oct 2006
Wow what a album the darkest drone Psychedelic album against the Iraq war you will ever hear, if you like Velvet Underground/Joy Division/The Doors/BRMC you will love this as it has all these elements in and more, I have been a fan for a while and if you want Hippie dark Drone this is one the best albums ever I have had it on Import for 6 months and is still the only CD in my player. The best tracks are 'Young Dead Men' wow actually just buy it the whole album is brilliant.
Lets start peace and love again, as we need this.
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