Image by Jennifer Hofstetter
The Black Angels beat the anti-war drum in Atlanta
July 8, 2008, at the Earl
By Beverly Bryan
Published: July 11th, 2008 | 11:40am
The market is flooded with more psychedelic rock than you can shake a tambourine at, but most eschew politics in favor of pure aesthetic pursuits or fashionable posturing. Maybe it’s our collective feeling of powerlessness, and maybe it’s all been said before but it makes all those revived trappings of the 1960s seem about as interesting as the summer edition of the Urban Outfitters catalog. At least it does after a Black Angels show.
A main source of the Angels’ massive righteousness was drummer Stephanie Bailey’s steady thump, which sounded like both a native American drum circle and the way your heart pounds in your ears when you think you might die.
Each of the band members pulled their weight as Kyle Hunt, Christian Bland, and Nate Ryan swapped instruments among one another with casual fluidity, including one of two organs. Singer Alex Maas beat a set of maracas against a tambourine for much of the show, and there were times when a band member would pull a floor tom aside to use it separately from the kit. At other times, Bailey would pass off drumming duties to another member and pick up the bass, which made the barometric pressure let up a bit.
Bland lent his voice on a few songs and both vocalists sang through vocoded mics, but rather than distancing the emotional value of the voice, the distortion blended it with what the guitars were saying.
Thick waves of reverb piled on to create the Black Angels’ cutthroat strain of psyche in a nice coating of grime and blues. Far from sounding dated, this band picks up where the loud psychedelic bands of the ’6os left off by incorporating musical lessons learned from decades under the inescapable influence of punk and metal.
The hammering beat and the low growl of the guitars seemed to signify a warning — or maybe a ticked-off mourning. Projected against a white backdrop were overlapped images of wars gone by, famous disasters, and the Olympics, while a strobe made the band members' shadows flicker like ghosts of Hiroshima.
The show achieved a plausible American mysticism and visceral proof that music can be bad as hell without being nihilistic. The band doesn’t hide that what sound like war drums are actually pretty anti-war, but its protest takes an aesthetic, almost shamanic form.
The sticker on Bland’s effects pedal stand reading “HALLIBURTON Is Making a Killing in Iraq” gave a clue as to what the band is about, but more to the point was the way he used those effects pedals to make his 12-string shriek like the unquiet dead. It may be what’s so uplifting about the Black Angels' doom. That, and the way they play freely within their drone while the ever-present tambourine lightens the load.
Hiding under his cap with eyes slitted, Maas’ treated tenor could put one in mind of a muezzin’s call to prayer. But, especially during the encore’s deliciously bloodthirsty version of “Black Grease,” if he was hawking a religious experience it was one reserved for the unrepentant. Part of the fun is that he doesn’t come off like much of an angel.
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