The Black Angels

Blending garage rock energy and shoegaze textures into a dark, atmospheric strain of psychedelia, the Black Angels rose to prominence among 21st-century psych-revival acts while restoring Texas’s stature as a hub for lysergic music. Drawing from the Velvet Underground and the 13th Floor Elevators as well as later acts such as Spiritualized and Spacemen 3, the group crafted immersive, evocative soundscapes that steered clear of genre clichés, a direction that reached full expression on 2008’s Directions to See a Ghost and extended through the shadowy intensity of 2010’s Phosphene Dream, the forceful statements of 2017’s Death Song, and the kinetic force of 2022’s Wilderness of Mirrors.

Formed in Austin, Texas during spring 2004, the original lineup consisted of Alex Maas on vocals, Christian Bland on guitar, Jennifer Raines on keyboards, Nathan Ryan on bass, and Stephanie Bailey on drums. The band took its name from “The Black Angel’s Death Song” on the Velvet Underground’s debut album and introduced itself with the self-released 2005 CD-R EP Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them?; three tracks later resurfaced on the same-year variant The Sniper at the Gates of Dawn. Light in the Attic Records followed with a professionally packaged self-titled four-song EP before year’s end, and in 2006 the group toured North America, including a slot at that year’s South by Southwest Music Conference.

The association with Light in the Attic yielded the first full-length release, 2006’s Passover, whose hype sticker billed the music as “Native American Drone ’n’ Roll.” Recorded and mixed at Erik Wofford’s Cacophony Recorders in Austin, the album prompted a return to the same studio for 2008’s Directions to See a Ghost, which expanded the band to a sextet with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Kyle Hunt. Late that year the group backed former 13th Floor Elevators singer Roky Erickson on a West Coast tour. In 2010 they recorded two collaborative pieces with UNKLE; one, “With You in My Head,” appeared on the soundtrack to the summer blockbuster The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. That exposure helped push their third album, September 2010’s Phosphene Dream—their debut for Blue Horizon Records—into the Billboard Top 50. By then Jennifer Raines had departed, restoring the lineup to five members. A companion EP, Phosgene Nightmare, followed in 2011 on 10-inch white vinyl. After Nate Ryan left in 2012, Rishi Dhir of Elephant Stone joined as an auxiliary member, contributing guitar and occasional sitar.

Indigo Meadow, released in 2013 and produced and mixed by Grammy-nominated Texan John Congleton, was soon paired with the April 2014 companion EP Clear Lake Forest. While the band maintained an active touring schedule and helped organize the Austin Psych Fest (later renamed Levitation), four years elapsed before the next studio album. During the interim they supplied the A-side “Molly Moves My Generation” to a 2014 split single on Britain’s Fuzz Club Records, with Sonic Jesus contributing the B-side “Lost Reprise,” and offered “Waterloo Waltz” to Scion Audio Visual’s 2015 Riley Hawk: Northwest Blow Out EP.

Death Song arrived in 2017, ranking among the Black Angels’ heaviest recordings and introducing a revised lineup that retained Stephanie Bailey, Christian Bland, Kyle Hunt, and Alex Maas while adding Jake Garcia on guitar, bass, and vocals. The band acknowledged Levitation’s significance with the 2021 vinyl-only Live at Levitation, drawn from 2010, 2011, and 2012 performances and issued in six psychedelic color variants. Alex Maas used the hiatus to issue his solo album Luca in 2020. Five years after their previous studio effort, the Black Angels returned with 2022’s Wilderness of Mirrors, which preserved their trippy, hard-edged approach while introducing abundant keyboard accents. A North American tour followed, succeeded by European and U.K. dates in 2023.