Passover

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Passover album cover
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Total Tracks: 10   Total Length: 58:43

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Lenny Kaye

eMusic Contributor

As musician, writer, and producer, Lenny Kaye is intimately involved with the creative impulse. He has been a guitarist for poet-rocker Patti Smith since her ba...more »

04.22.11
New Age apocalypso from a Texas-based sextet of space cowboys.
2008 | Label: Light In The Attic / IODA

The Black Angels hail from Austin, Texas, bearing a geographic and spatial legacy inherited from the 13th Floor Elevators (ex-Elevator Tommy Hall, he of the jug and the metaphisique, penned a recent celebration of the Angels 'fuzz-drone for the group's website). Moving through such druidic touchstones as Jesus and Mary Chain, the Verve, and Brian Jonestown Massacre, the Black Angels plant themselves firmly with one foot on tribalstomp earth and the other in the stirrups of space cowboy.

Passover is their debut album, containing just a couple of the songs appearing on their introductory EP, and mind-expanding on that promise. Listening to the Black Angels descend into the meltdown that is "The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven," with its vaguely Indo-modals providing a layered and cumulus atmosphere, the feel is less Syd-era Pink Floyd than Hawkwind. Their genre is new age apocalypso, with storm-warning vocals more frontal than many space-core groups, and the lyrics bear parsing: the segue of "Young Men Dead" into "The First Vietnamese War" is hardly coincidental.

Nor is the reference point of their name, after the Velvet Underground's "Black Angels Death Song." Sterling Morrison, the Velvets 'lead guitarist, wound up in Texas,… read more »

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!!!!!:0:)!!!!!

fever19

Phenomenal debut from another amazing Austin band. Taking from masters past (13th Floor Elevators, Doors, VU, Zep, Sonic Youth, etc...) and making it their own on every level. The Black Angels create nostalgia while carving new roads for the future. Heavy Heavy rotation on all three recordings.

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Essential.

RenaissanceMan

If you're into the new wave of psychedelia, you need this record. The Black Angels are leading the charge, even to the point of conducting their own annual psychedelic rock festival in Austin, Texas. "Young Men Dead" and "Bloodhounds on My Trail" will haunt you.

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10 songs but costs 12 credits?

growch

One step closer to quitting emusic. Same thing for the Directions to See a Ghost. 11 songs != 12 credits.

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Brilliant

Easy-Urf

Superb fuzzed out psych rock. Can hear vibes of Roses/Doors/VU and a bit of Zep. Love it.

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Will wake you up

handler09

And shake your head into a new place. Austin music is alive and well.

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A Glorious Nightmare

blerg

An awesome debut, so many bands these days are putting out sonically complex great first albums. Black Grease, Manipulation, Bloodhounds, Sniper are faves.

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Take it out for a few fuzzy orbits

SelfRisinMojo

Employs the same fuzzed out murk and roll used in the beginning to simulate the droning sound you would naturally hear while propelling deep into your space of choice. Chanting, ranting vocals that sound like a cross between Jim Morrison and Patti Smith float over Hawkwind by way of Astronomy Domine trance rock. Eastern smoke, things going backwards and various other effects meant to shiver the ganglion lurk throughout. Exactly what Mr.Saxon was referring to when he encouraged us to “Travel With Your Mind.”

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Incredible

dsalas

Not only is this a great album with stunning cover art, but it's perhaps the best title-to-music fit ever. I cannot even imagine a better title for a dirge-y, surreal psychedelic rock album than "Passover."

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Wow!

iamgumbo

This is great. Just like other reviewers have said there are hints of Doors/Velvet Underground/Joy Division - but also with a pulsating baseline to boot! This blew me away - I cannot believe that I had never heard of these before! One of those click at random selections and I am so happy to now have discovered this top group.

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Great Album

lumbee5

This is my first time downloading The Black Angels. They are awesome!!

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“Black Grease” says it all, blackly: Austin’s Black Angels temper stoned Black Sabbath drone with Black Keys bluesy bombast, producing a sort of boozy psychedelic White Light/White Heat in the process. The aforementioned song takes the record’s central aesthetic idea and spirals it out of control. The shamanistic lyrics here rise as a single mantra of “Kill, kill, kill, kill,” and the filthy reverberating guitars are kept to an acidic simmer, all so that Passover’s real focus — that is, Stephanie Bailey’s insidious percussion — reaches a level of unconscious insistence that feels almost locomotive, tumbling over itself too fast to safely stop. Other tracks, like seething, stately “Empire,” wear the band’s Velvet Underground influence more proudly, keeping the drums at a steady patter and letting the guitars scramble like rats up a well. Passover is a reactionary record, trading in Vietnam imagery and tired Doors tropes in places as easily as it does stoopid-awesome stoner rock in others, but it seems a reaction of the very best kind — that is, free of agenda, full of ideas, and fun. – Clayton Purdom

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