Wednesday, December 17

One Track Mind: Stormy High

Yet Another independent rock band from eMusic's top 88 list (they make almost all my music recommendations these days), Black Mountain's a Canadian 70's-metal band.  At least, they are on In The Future, the only point of contact I've had with them.

The opening track of the album is a song entitled Stormy High.  I'm not sure what it's about - the lyrics are pretty vague - but the opening guitar riff is in 7/4, so they won immediate kudos for that. Then they won more kudos by extending the feel of classic metal - I'm thinking Sabbath vol 4, maybe pre-Wall floyd - through the entire track.  Guitar and bass mostly in unison on rising scale patterns, the keyboards acting more like percussion than anything else, drums that just keep on stomping forward, vocals that - despite the mildly cheesy female moan that surfaces in places - fit into the melody rather than wandering around it.

2 comments:

Pharaohmagnetic said...

This album is great. I've liked Black Mountian every since I bopped my head to the song "druganaut" from their self-title album. That was the extent of my experience with them, until now.

Alphabetically, this album segues directly into Black Sabbath in my music collection. The transition is seamless.

eMusic has a pretty simple formula for greatness. Take a large but necessarily obscure catalog thanks to the non-participation of the major labels. Trawl through that catalog and recommend the gems, which are bound to be better than anything you'd find on the majors anyway. Serve your customers high-quality MP3s that are playable and portable on any system in the universe.

Example: I had been hearing a lot about the Rural Alberta Advantage on various music press outlets, but it was eMusic's personalized recommendation that made me complete the purchase. More on that next episode.

Pharaohmagnetic said...

I don't know about you, but the part of the song at 3:30 where the fuzz drops out sure grabs my attention.

Also, the transition into the slower beat of track 2, "Angel," bowls me over like a candlestick.