18.
Black Mountain
In The Future

In The Future in fact takes most of its cues from the past – there's the swagger and blues of Led Zeppelin, the floating prog of Pink Floyd, the hammond organ of Deep Purple and the crunch of Black Sabbath. Yet, there are also more recent influences to be found here: ‘Stay Free’ reminds me of The Flaming Lips, and ‘Wucan’ comes over like a slightly electroed up White Stripes. The mixture of male and female vocals thoughout makes the album feel fresh and varied, as does the willingness of the band to experiment. Black Mountain are a prog-rock behemoth, and filled a large Pure Reason Revolution shaped hole for me this year (though Black Mountain are both more varied than that band, and less good). Yet, whilst this is, ultimately, a prog-rock album, it is not an exercise in either shoe gazing or star gazing, but is a focused piece of work, clear in purpose and execution. A real challenger to compete with the best acts on the modern prog scene.