Album Review: The Black Angels Sing Their “Death Song”
This may sound odd, but The Black Angels’ new album, Death Song, makes me feel like I am dying. If ever a band went for the sounds and thoughts that happen as you begin to “see the light”, the Black Angels might be the closest to manifest the soundtrack of this universal moment. Death Song is haunting and beautiful, and embodies what you think you would hear, feel, and, overall, imagine when embracing the final curtain call of life.
It is a somber note to wonder about mortality, which explains why songs such as “Currency”, “Medicine”, and “Life Song”, have a menacing aura to them. The Black Angels have created guitar melodies meant to creep inside your brain like a worm digging into the ground. Their instrumental are fuzzy and squirming because you never feel comfortable with the notion of death, but you do feel intrigued by it. After all, it is a finite, non-consentual end to everything you knew. That odd, emotional dichotomy is perfect for an album made to question “devotion” as a concept. There is nothing like Death to challenge you on how you lived your life, and most people, when thinking on their mortality, ponder about the devoted choices they made to certain people, places, and things. Why did I dedicate myself so much to her/ our relationship (“I’d Kill For Her” and “I Dreamt”)? Why did I put so much work into a vision of my reality rather than my actual reality (“Estimate” and “Half Believing”)? Questions like these can keel a person over with spiritual discomfort because everyone, at least once, kicks themselves in the brain for spending so much time and effort on things/ people that did not matter. Thus, Death Song analyzes the reasons people leave this earth questioning and building remorse over how they stayed in it. Each song feels like a sincere, even scary contemplation on how a person can make the same mistake in how they placed their “devotion” in life. Yet, you listen into the rather daunting topic because the music is epically dark and spiritually psychedelic as if you are in your own Gethsemane, and vocalist Alex Maas is conscious.
Maas has a voice the whines down your conscience like thread being stretched, pulled, and twirled to create fabric. For an album made to see how you are made, like fabric, his voice feels mystical. It is like you are swirling in a supernova of classic punk or rock vocalists that knew how to make their voice as if they were falling from the highest of towers and had accepted their fate. The chillness to Maas vocals is both attractive and etches further the “menacing aura” of Death Song. Tracks like “Hunt Me Down” and “Death March” feel like dark, sonic fairytales, of which, like life, the happy ending is up to you. Thus, for a psych-rock, experimental album that helps you graze the needed, but challenging question of life, ironically, Death Song is the one to hear. For More Information on The Black Angels And To Buy Death Song On April 21 Click Here.
