Cortex-Cutting Cobras

photo: Justin Dylan Renney

Not a jam band.

Details

Black Angels
Passover
Light in the Attic

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More About

• Brian Jonestown
• Christian Bland
• Austin (Texas)
• The Black Angels (Band)
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

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What with all the Brian Jonestown mass o' curs barking around MySpace these days, getting all aflutter about a new "psych-rock" band is a task. Mainly 'cause most of these swirlers make it sound like a task, twisting the reverb button to "obvious" and pretending they're not jam bands. Enter Christian Bland, singer-screamer for this Austin, Texas, combo, with a nasally, searing whine that grabs the reins of the Black Angels' crushed-velvet pounding and whips it into a fury. More menacing than most of their contemporaries—"Young Men Dead" stomps like Zeus, while "The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven" sneaks like a cobra—the Angels keep the sonics raw, the recording bare, and the sentiments never secretly hippie-dippy ("You can feel her madness/You can see right through her eyes"). Aside from the bassist's being born on a cult compound, their mad cred derives from cortex-cutting fuzz riffs and some of the most desperate gutter hallucinogens since early Spacemen 3. Though young and genre-snagged, Passover is a brawny debut.