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Loud-quiet-loud has never been so dizzying.
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This is a wonderfully zealous experience, bristling with realised potential and fulfilled ambition.
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Alternative PressWhat really impresses on the quintet's sophomore stunner is the way Black Mountain effortlessly shift from devastating to devastatingly beautiful. [Feb 2008, p.117]
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Under The RadarIn the Future is without a chink in its armor, the rare lull-free album, and shows that perhaps their greatest moments are indeed yet to come. [Winter 2008, p.80]
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Entertainment WeeklyIt's heavy and appealingly dopey in equal measure. [25 Jan 2008, p.69]
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It's this mix of the loud and the trippy that Black Mountain specializes in, and In the Future sees the band striving for epic proportions.
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Black Mountain won’t win any prizes for innovation, but their slightly bruised brand of retro is far more fertile than that of their contemporaries.
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But where Black Mountain's message begins to get woolly the music is never anything less than exhilarating
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This album is more consistent than the first album because it succeeds not only with the hard-rock shuffle of “Stormy High”, but also with the acoustic-driven, high-register of “Stay Free”.
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It's packed with stuff, but there's enough space here, and wonderfully warm atmospheres, to bring the listener right into the deeper sonic dimensions that Black Mountain is trying to create.
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Rooted in the past this album may be, but it has genuine moments of original inspiration, both musically and lyrically, and a scope of ambition most bands would be scared to try out.
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They put their cloudy heads together and came up with the power-chord-slashing and hobbitty keyboard werping goods but wisely didn’t lose all the dirty distortion and strummy acoustic bits.
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If you're not a fan of their weighty retro riffs, Into The Future is not going to sway you; but those who loved their self-titled debut will thrill to the darker, more convincing sounds of former single 'Stormy High' with its Plantish wails and solid Sabbathy riffs.
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MojoIn The Future showcases a group who knows exactly what they're doing. [Feb 2008, p.101]
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The WireThis album eclipses their previous output and hits a consistent note of righteous force. [Jan 2008, p.69]
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Q MagazineIn The Future has enough ideas to last several albums. Mostly, they work. [Feb 2008, p.98]
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More diabolical and daring than the band’s shaggy 2005 debut, Future peaks with the primordial 'Bright Lights.'
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Black Mountain pushes its songs further on In the Future, experimenting with druggy synthesizers and shifting musical dynamics on complex arrangements that veer from hazy psychedelia to brutal riffage.
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This is definitely a solid album from a band that is surely to get better.
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On repeated listening the impression [of being a genre exercise or a hipster parody] gives way to the songs themselves, envisioning angels and demons and plaintively wondering about violence and inevitable desolation.
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FilterIt's easy to zone out, but during several tracks you could be staring at a carpet stain for five minutes and still have time to screw your head back on to hit the moments of triumph. [Winter 2008, p.92]
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In the Future is a great second act, a consolidation of strengths, better songwriting and more ideas.
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The fuzzy guitars start to blend together as the album progresses — the point, perhaps, but Black Mountain do well to break up the repetition with 'Stay Free,' an acoustic, falsetto ballad, and 'Queens Will Play.'
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Future raises the stakes considerably, leaving the band's musical talents to play catchup with their new material's epic-sized dimensions.
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In the Future has an even bigger kick [than their debut], with a surprising blues edge and Amber Webber's vocals adding a touch of Sandy Denny to the battle-of-Evermore vibe.
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Black Mountain refine their position as the psychedelic hard-rock/goof-folk revivalists that you can actually stand for an entire album.
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Black Mountain seems to have perpetrated some legitimate time travel, creating a record that could have sprung from an era of muscle cars, muscle tees, and moustaches.
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Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it before... it’s taking drugs to make music to take drugs to, or something. But it’s still pretty damn fun, and Black Mountain do it with a higher idea-per-song ratio than most of their fellow fetishists.
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Coming down from the, er ... mountain, well, British Columbia, bandleader Stephen McBean and his cohorts sound logjammed in the past on In the Future.
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Those listeners who recognized Black Mountain as one in a long line of inward looking, backward thinking bands will find that In The Future ups the ante. That's not automatically a great thing, and it means that Black Mountain will yet again be greeted with abundant I know what you're doing and I don't like it reactions.
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So there's ambition, here, yes--but where there's ambition, there's often overambition, and so it goes here.
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When they rock out they are truly bruising, but, happily, their music is now underpinned with a new-found serenity.
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This grand musical quest is often fruitless, and leaves this listener wondering what might have been, had the group demanded less of themselves.
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The first three songs will undoubtedly hook any listener into continuing the album, but the listener will find nothing as impressive as that opening statement.
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Too quick and severe on the brakes, Black Mountain stunt their own grandiosity in the name of dynamics or patience.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 23 out of 26
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Mixed: 1 out of 26
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Negative: 2 out of 26
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Feb 2, 2012
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RileyS.Jan 18, 2009One of the best rock albums, maybe of ever. Nice combination of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.
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KGFMar 17, 2008