Black Mountain: The Future Is Now

Vancouver’s ubiquitous crew finally stagger back into the spotlight

Three years is a significant chunk of time. In three years, a band can burst on to the radar, have their record garner critical acclaim, tour the world, open for Coldplay and then, just as quickly, disappear. This is the story of so many bands (minus the Coldplay part), but it sums up Black Mountain's more than most.

Their sophomore record, In The Future, was released almost exactly three years to the week that their much-lauded eponymous debut saw the light of day.

Three years seems like a decent amount of time to erect a world record-breaking skyscraper or deciding to ask your girlfriend to marry you, but it hardly seems like the kind of time a band would need to get their act together.

"We kind of just decided to not rush making another record just for the sake of having one out," says frontman Stephen McBean. "We wanted to come at it while our hearts were there and we knew it would be fun. I guess we were burnt from touring.

"And we had a bunch of songs, but we didn't really have the main scope of our idea for the next record, which was to make an album, like a double-gatefold sleeve album, which we ended up doing. So we're happy about that. Hopefully it's worthwhile."

In The Future certainly has the feel of a record that's the culmination of plenty of time and energy. From the modern epic flourishes of "Tyrants" to the pounding beats of "Stormy High" and the three-part assault of "Bright Lights," the group's second effort is as powerful and efficient as anyone who slavishly awaited it would hope.

Mind you, the wait was more often than not the result of indecision than straight-up rocking out. The album has two main producers. Sheldon Zaharko and longtime group associate Colin Stewart.

"We did some of the stuff at the Factory, which Sheldon was helping us with," McBean explains. "It's a really nice studio, and it's the same room where they made Dr. Feelgood and stuff, but not everything was working. Maybe we wanted to dabble too much in all the knobs we had no control over, but it wasn't coming back in the right way.

"So we went to the Hive and, you know, Colin's always fun to work with. And he basically trusts us enough that he'll leave for the night with a bathtub full of booze and knows that we won't do coke all over the control board. We'll take care of his studio."

The big difference between records one and two, outside of the quality of the production, is McBean's lyricism. Where their debut's spare tracks were echoed by matching abstract imagery and random musings, In The Future features a few tracks that openly call out politicians and religion.

Not that the notoriously laid back McBean intentionally wanted to convey any sort of message to the band's ever-growing fan base.

"Lyrics are really hard to analyze," he says. "Sometimes I don't really get them until years later.

"I think 'Tyrants' slightly, some lyrics, I wouldn't say there are messages there, but more they go with the mood of a song, the theatrics of a song. The lyrics on 'Tyrants' would only fit a song like that. If I was singing about a cup of coffee, it wouldn't have the same effect. But people keep commenting on how there's this darkness and then angels theme, which we didn't really plan in the sequencing, but I'm kind of noticing it a bit."

Of course, Black Mountain didn't really disappear between albums. On the contrary, they were everywhere. McBean and vocalist Amber Webber toured with Pink Mountaintops, bassist Matt Camirand's Blood Meridian put out two records, and Webber and drummer Joshua Wells released an LP under their Lightning Dust guise.

With so many bands on the periphery and attentions divided, what's priority number one for the group?

"It's Black Mountain," McBean says. "Whenever we have time off everyone's busy doing something. But, I think we leave on Feb. 1 for basically 'the tour.' But I can't complain, it's fun."

The following feature is from the March 2008 issue of Chart Magazine. To purchase the issue, head on over to the Chart Shop.