Tonight: Black Angels and Black Mountain at Showbox at the Market

Blawesome. It's a new(-ish?) word for extra awesome, bloody awesome, or (most importantly) the level of awesomeness that the Black Angels and Black Mountain will reach tonight at the Showbox at the Market. If you needed something to get you through a day of post-Thanksgiving back-at-work blues, the promise of a Black Angels – Black Mountain show just might be it.

This psych-rock match made in heaven is touring in support of new albums Phosphene Dream (Angels) and Wilderness Heart (Mountain), both of which find the groups emphasizing the differences between their sounds. Though each band is firmly rooted in driving bass and heavy guitar, Black Mountain is expanding its sound significantly. Wilderness Heart offers a diverse blend of prog rock, speed metal, and folk, with "Let Spirits Ride" soaring toward thrasher territory while "Buried by the Blues" provides an unexpected but not unwelcome synthy slowdown. Capitalizing on the aforementioned sinewy synths, Amber Webber's unexpected vocals, and even the occasional tambourine jangle, the new Black Mountain provides a more complete sonic landscape—and hopefully an engaging live show.

While Black Mountain reaches out, the Black Angels dig in deep, mining the depths of their instruments for even more stoner rock revelations. Keeping on in more or less the same mindset that drove its previous records, Phosphene Dream is indeed a trippy vision of a disc, perfect to listen to while knocked out on anything from tryptophan to the hard stuff. The droning waves of psychic sound that the Black Angels put out may not always be particularly stimulating or innovative, but they are often quite pleasurable—and after a stressful first day back at work, that's exactly what we need.

Black Angels and Black Mountain // Showbox Market // Doors 8, Show 9 // tix $19