Always a Six, Never a Nine

The second album by Portland's Black Elk comes from a familiar enough starting point — namely, there's something about loud guitars and aggressive yowling that will always please somebody, somewhere. Given how thoroughly any number of putatively different sounds and styles that match that description have essentially cross-fertilized into one monstrous leviathan of music, it comes as little surprise that Black Elk are almost a post-everything band — they use lumbering metal, frenetic no wave rampages, epic solos, and distorted art noise, and that's just in the opening song "My Last Shred of Decency." But if Black Elk are still arguably working towards their own sound, they're doing so with panache — and it doesn't hurt that they've got a full appreciation of the classic '80s thrash and power metal they pretty obviously grew up on. (It's something that's even audible in the quieter moments, like the acoustic guitar start of "Brine," as any fan of classic Metallica can confirm.) Hearing the spiraling solos and chunky riffs on songs like the fierce as hell "Pig Crazy," helped by the excellent recording quality throughout the album, complements rather than works against singer Tom Glose's rasped rampage. Meanwhile, the fact that the album ends on a perfectly melodramatic note with the ever-more-intense performance of "Winter Formal" cutting off suddenly to silence further shows the band's sense of how to leave a maximum impact behind. At this rate the group's next album should be a spectacular breakthrough.