Review | With Death Song, psychedelic rockers The Black Angels turn anxiety into art
The Texas band’s hypnotic drones and sludgy riffs are the perfect expression of the anxiety they felt about Donald Trump winning the 2016 US presidential election
Death Song
Partisan
It’s been four years since we’ve heard from Texan psych-rockers The Black Angels and much has changed in their home country since the slight misstep of 2013’s Indigo Meadow. Written and recorded before last year’s US presidential election, their fifth album reflects the anxiety felt by the band about the crowning of a trumped-up megalomaniac. On the blistering lead single, Currency, vocalist Alex Maas declaims: “One day it will all be over, one day it will all be gone.” It’s one of the album’s highlights, along with the thunderous Comanche Moon, a song about Native American survival. The Austin collective have turned the reverb down a notch on Death Song, but their music still bristles with a dark, hypnotic insanity. While the subject matter may be as heavy as guitarist Christian Bland’s sludgy stoner riffs, producer Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty) brings a glimmer of light to the band’s menacing, apocalyptic drone.