{"id":10815,"date":"2016-05-20T05:30:52","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T09:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=10815"},"modified":"2016-05-13T10:34:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T14:34:32","slug":"five-years-in-the-wilderness-the-return-of-black-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2016\/05\/20\/five-years-in-the-wilderness-the-return-of-black-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Years in the Wilderness: The Return of Black Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly six years elapsed between Vancouver-based Black Mountain<\/strong>‘s 2011 album Wilderness Heart<\/i> and their latest, the straightforwardly-named IV<\/i> (like all their, albums, released on Jagjaguwar). \u201cWe sort of cautiously took a bit of a break from the band,\u201d says keyboard player Jeremy Schmidt<\/strong>. \u201cWe had done a lot of touring after Wilderness Heart<\/i> came out; we had been pretty much full-time recording and touring. We’d been doing it for a good many years, and we felt we needed a breather.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s not as if the band members were idle, though. Each was involved in at least one other musical pursuit during the extended hiatus. \u201cWe were all champing at the bit to get some of those projects done,\u201d Schmidt says. \u201cBetween the five of us, we’ve probably released about five records in the last five years; they just weren’t Black Mountain records.\u201d He points out that some of those other bands mounted tours of their own, too. \u201cFive years goes by pretty quickly when all that is going on,\u201d he chuckles.<\/p>\n

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Add to all that another challenge in crafting a follow-up to Wilderness Heart<\/i>: \u201cWe also don’t all live in the same city, so there’s that,\u201d Schmidt says. \u201cThere has to me more forethought in coordinating things just so we can get together to work on stuff.\u201d The group also parted ways with bass player (and to date the only original member to leave the group) Matt Camirand<\/strong>. \u201cAnd that all takes time, too,\u201d says Schmidt.\u201d The group recently added bassist Brad Truax<\/strong>, veteran of many recording sessions and formerly\/briefly of Interpol.<\/p>\n

The group rallied to create IV<\/i>, released April 1. Highlighted by the lead vocals of Amber Webber<\/strong> and Stephen McBean<\/strong>, the group’s signature space\/stoner-rock vibe is largely intact. But IV<\/i> features song structures that are a bit compact when compared to some of the more sprawling epics found on 2008’s In the Future<\/i> and the group’s self-titled 2005 debut. The new disc’s \u201cCemetery Breeding\u201d is perhaps the catchiest track ever associated with Black Mountain; the five-piece successfully transform riffs into hooks. And the song is emblematic of an album that \u2013 in its own way \u2013 offers more sonic variety than has been heard on a Black Mountain album before now.<\/p>\n

As always, the group charts its own sonic path. \u201cI don’t recall a time when we ever felt any constraint, any pressure to conform to somebody’s idea of what the band should be,\u201d says Schmidt. \u201cWe’ve always not paid much attention to that type of voice, if we’re even hearing it at all. We just do things as we see fit at the time, without much thought to how it might be perceived or thought about in the grand scheme of things.\u201d He laughs and adds, \u201cThat’s the job of other people to sort out.\u201d<\/p>\n