Since forming in 2004, The Black Angels have been instrumental in growing and influencing both the Austin music scene and the modern psychedelic rock revival around the world. With their creative collective, The Reverberation Society, founding members Alex Maas and Christian Bland started the Austin Psych Fest (recently renamed Levitation) which, unsurprisingly, is primarily booked full of bands in the psychedelic and proto-metal vein and attracts patrons from around the world. Currently touring on their fifth LP, Death Song, the band played a stellar hometown show to a near capacity crowd at Stubb’s in Austin on Saturday, May 27th.
As was expected, the set list was heavy on songs from their new critically acclaimed protest album, Death Song. As the band started the show with the album opener “Currency”, the crowd was instantly transported into a soundscape of psychedelic garage rock that would last the next two hours. Kaleidoscopic images interspersed with footage from the JFK era was projected behind the band throughout the night while intoxicating lights illuminated the band. Much of the set was made up of new material, and over the course of the night nearly every track from Death Song made an appearance and the crowd was unsurprisingly fine with that. Outside of new material, much of the older material came from their 2006 debut, Passover, and 2010’s Phosphene Dream. While the crowd clearly loved every song that was played, “Black Grease” really saw the the entire venue get into it. Unfortunately for fans of 2008’s Directions to See a Ghost, the only song played was “You on the Run”, which found fans yelling out requests for more from that well-loved album. The main set closed with the impressive “Life Song”, which runs close to seven minutes on the album but ran closer to ten in a live setting. After a short break, the band returned and played “Estimate” and “Death March” from the new album before inviting their support band, A Place To Bury Strangers, to the stage to perform a striking version of “Young Man Dead” to close out the night.
Though The Black Angels have fans that span the world, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the energy of the band fed a lot on the gratefulness and enthusiasm generated by the hometown audience. From their vivid performances to their exuberant albums to their mind-blowing festival, The Black Angels’ importance to the psych rock scene cannot be overstated. Yet, even with the proverbial weight of the modern psych rock world on their shoulders, The Black Angels prove time and again that they are up to the task.
