IV
Seventies rock revivalists Black Mountain have always dabbled with synthesizers, but they’ve never embraced them as much as they do on *IV*. The grooves are still epic and stony, but for every Sabbath-imbued jam, like the glorious, eight-minute opener, there’s a Pink Floyd-guided suite, like “Defector,” which mixes airy, bluesy vocals, icy keys, and an insistent, trudging bassline. Somehow, though, it’s the tighter tunes that are even more exploratory. On the gothy “Cemetery Breeding,” Stephen McBean and Amber Webber deliver crushingly gorgeous lines like \"When you looked in my eyes/I was dreaming of suicide” between Echo & The Bunnymen-style synth-guitar riffs.
The rock canon has many anti-heroes, Black Mountain being the latest. In the past, Can’s 'Tago Mago' established that the only rule in rock and roll is that there are no rules. Pink Floyd’s prodigious output in the 70s showed us that architecture can be cool, while unskilled laborers Black Sabbath demonstrated you can make a lot from not that much. Now Black Mountain teach us that you don’t have to be afraid of the past to move bravely into the future, defining what it is to be a classic rock band in the new millennium. 'IV' is an unapologetically ambitious record made by a group of musicians who are at the peak of their powers.
The fourth album from Vancouver hard rock band Black Mountain rolls everything up the band has ever done—the heavy riffs, the prog ambitions, and the pop smarts—into an alternate-universe version of classic-rock history.
The Vancouver-based rock behemoth reinforce their heavy West Coast vibe with an album that stoners and psych-heads of all stripes should be able to agree on this year.
If 2010's Wilderness Heart was Canadian rockers Black Mountain's timely answer to Houses Of The Holy, then IV is – ahem – their Led Zeppelin IV.
Like Tame Impala's Kevin Parker, Stephen McBean excels at evoking the feeling of the past without making specific reference to it. That aest...
Let's pause first for a moment to admire that cover! It looks like something right out of your dad's box of water-damaged classic rock vinyl, pulled from between AC/DC's Dirty Deeds and Styx's Pieces of Eight.