Rock Reviews

Passover

Review

Psychedelic rock in the 21st century. It's by no means a non-existent thing, but the idea of truly psychedelic rock of a high quality with modern rock is hard to come by. Yet in 2006 The Black Angels (a call back to a Velvet Underground song) created this album, Passover, a fairly perfect mix of rock and psychedelic atmosphere.

Passover creates this atmosphere with most importantly a constant droning noise throughout the album, creating a doomy (but not depressing) atmosphere that really is unlike anything I've ever heard. Compounding this are some very talented musicians, 60's fuzzy guitar playing throughout, crashing drums and a singer most closely compared to Jim Morrison.

The Black Angels are a band really hard to describe without just listening to them, while there genre of music has been done there overall "style" is very different. "Young Men Dead" starts the album off right with a guitar and crashes in with the drone and guitar hooks. "The First Vietnamese War" starts off with crashing drums and kicks in with heavy bass/drone sound but things really get off to a great start with "The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven" one of the best on the album. Not just the vibe of the song, but this is when the drumming is first noticeable, some of the best drumming in modern rock music is by Stephanie Bailey.

"The Prodigal Sun" is one of the most psychedelic songs on the album, well perhaps "Black Grease" can share that title with absolutely sick guitar playing. "Empire" shows off more awesome drumming and continues with "Better off Alone" a more vocal song (or at least more attention is on the lyrics, the drumming is still beating away along with the usual instruments).

The last two songs are probably the best of the album, the fantastic "Bloodhounds on my Trail" and "Call to Arms", the latter which is a bit more relaxed than the rest of the album but still excellent.

I can usually review specific parts of an album fine but with Passover the whole thing is just excellent. (except a mediocre "Manipulation") There is no bumps along the way, most every music album has a dip into a slower paced song or a bit different (say rock to folk rock, to hard rock, etc.) but for the entire album The Black Angels are on absolute full blast. Very likely if you have interest in psychedelic rock you've already heard and love this album, but it's not a presiquite for anyone that appreciates high levels of music quality not just in the songs themselves but the ability of the musicians with there instruments. (or vocally, should note that Christian Bland's voice fits in absolutely perfectly)

The 60's and 70's rock music is dead but Passover makes you ignore that and feel that atmosphere of music again.

9.0

Songs