The Black Angels

Passover

Related Content

• Tumblr of the Week: The Kitten Covers
  February 1, 2012
• The Ten Best Posthumous Albums
  July 6, 2011
• Generationals @ The Sail Inn
  July 7, 2011
• Sundown Showdown IV @ Palo Verde Lounge and Yucca Tap Room
  January 26, 2012
• Iceage @ Yellow Canary Dance Hall
  July 14, 2011

More About

• Edvard Munch
• Ian Curtis
• The Velvet Underground
• Visual Arts
• Punk Rock

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Edvard Munch once wrote, "Illness, insanity and death are the black angels that kept watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life." The Black Angels tuck this cheery little epigram into the triptych of the beautifully eye-popping design of their debut album. They make good on their implied promise with a dense sonic palette that owes much to the Velvet Underground's seductive wall of noise. Produced to sound like it was recorded in the bottom of a well, the band's reverb-soaked mid-tempo grind slowly builds up over 10 extended cuts that draw you into a world full of violence, pointless rage and madness, a world that reflects the dysfunctional times we live in. When lead vocalist Maas, whose hopeless moan sounds like the ghost of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, sings, "The empire is . . . preaching to the choir, and that choir is deaf and blind," it's hard not to picture George W.'s bland, empty smirk.