The opening lines of Black Mountain's second album, In The Future, are a perfect introduction to the band. Over skuzzy, lumbering riffs and thundering drums, singer-guitarist Stephen McBean howls, "Witches on your trail, my lord/Stormy, stormy high/You've been dying to be set free/Curse those huntin' hounds." Welcome to the world of Black Mountain, where it's always 1976, Friday nights are spent with a Ouija board and a bong and Ronnie James Dio is God (or the devil, if you prefer). If Beavis and Butthead were still roaming suburban living rooms in 2008, they'd be huge Black Mountain fans. But In The Future isn't merely an onslaught of stoner-metal riffage and meandering, psychedelic guitar and organ lines. The epic, despondent "Tyrants" careens between gauzy, acid-folk elegy and ferocious rocker in the manner of mid-period Pink Floyd. On the gorgeously melodic, largely acoustic "Stay Free," McBean unleashes a sweet, wistful falsetto reminiscent of My Morning Jacket's Jim James. Of course, those interludes work all the better surrounded as they are by sinister, stormy yowls about "demon lust," "black magic touch" and "blood sprawl[ing] across the walls."

-- David Peisner