Punk Rock Ist Nicht Tot

The third long player from Texan psychedelic rockers The Black Angels sees a maturity in their music. All the usual elements are still there, the spaced out vocals, the swirling psychedelic organ and the heavy guitar riffs but it sounds more laid back and more confident than the previous two efforts. It’s also better produced, which for a lot of bands can be the kiss of death; a band’s first album is produced on a budget and has a raw energy, then the record labels get hold of them and before you know it an expensive producer has managed to gloss it up and in the process lose all that energy that made them so good in the first place. Well in this instance the expensive producer is Dave Sardy (Oasis, Wolfmother, Black Mountain) and although he has indeed glossed it up in this instance he has actually managed to improve their sound.

As for the songs, there are nine in total adding up to a lean 41 minutes. For the most part the songs aren’t that far removed from Passover and Directions to See A Ghost, the majority pretty much at home in the 1970s, though they seem to have added The Doors to their list of influences, especially with Christian Bland’s vocals. The tracks that really stand out are ‘Sunday Afternoon’ with its wobbly guitars, ‘Telephone’ which sounds like it was recorded a decade earlier and album opener ‘Bad Vibrations’ for no other reason than it had my head bobbing up and down like one of those irritating nodding dog things that idiots have on the parcel shelf of their car. 3/5

Mark Cousens

Out 13th September on Blue Horizon

www.myspace.com/theblackangels

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