Black Mountain: Wilderness Heart

Label: Jagjaguwar

Sometimes it seems like Black Mountain is just toying with us -- such as within the first two minutes of "The Hair Song," the opening track on the Vancouver band's new album, Wilderness Heart. Without breaking a sweat, the group runs through satisfyingly crushing rawk, dropping proto-metal and prog signifiers and quoting a Zep riff ("Kashmir"? Amazing how hard a riff can be to place when it's this decontextualized) among hand-claps and perfectly balanced male-female vocals. Within that four-minute song they say more than most bands do on entire albums. The rest of Wilderness Heart similarly dives into different corners of longhair-rock, highly stylized but none the lesser for it: "Rollercoaster" reconnects with turn-of-the-70s blues-rock before exploding into post-Sabbathian bottom-heaviness; "Let Spirits Ride" evokes a hybrid of early Motörhead and mid-80s thrash-manic Metallica; the title track blends melody and mass (Black Mountain has always had a great drum sound) to try and break on through to...whatever's on the other side. All the while, as they drop hints and winks toward their influences, Black Mountain steers well clear of ironic statement. This rock is for real. (M.L. Thrope)