The Black Angels

About

The Black Angels took their name from a Velvet Underground song, and the nod goes further than that: their logo is a high contrast negative of Nico's face. Formed in Austin in 2004, they built a reputation on dark, heavy psych that critics tied to Spiritualized and the 13th Floor Elevators. Their 2006 debut Passover even opened its liner notes with a quote from Edvard Munch about illness, insanity and death being the black angels watching over his cradle. Their songs have turned up in everything from Fringe and Californication to the video game The Last of Us: Part II, where Young Men Dead gets a spot. They once backed Roky Erickson on a West Coast run, and they helped launch Austin Psych Fest, now called Levitation. The albums keep coming, with Death Song in 2017 and Wilderness of Mirrors in 2022, and the video for Empires Falling landed that same year.