Following Tame Impala's album a few weeks ago, here's another release from a band who want to party like it's 1969.The third from this Vancouver outfit is a heavy rock album like they used to make back then, on which every thundering piece of stoner metal is matched by an acoustic reverie – a yin and yang seen in the sharing of vocals between Stephen McBean and Amber Webber. There's some nonsense in the lyrics – McBean's assertion on Let Spirits Ride that "the rudimentary force of life is shining through the gate of heaven's door" sounds like something from a particularly unhelpful self-help book, but when it's set to such a thundering riff, that's easy to forgive. Black Mountain actually sound more supple when they open the throttle, as on Old Fangs, than when they're trying to be restrained: while this might be an album modeled after early Led Zeppelin, they lack Zeppelin's lightness of touch on the acoustic numbers. Still, there's nothing to disappoint, even if Wilderness Heart never quite scales the peaks of the band's wondrous live performances.
