Last night, I hope you didn’t miss 7th St.’s evening of psychedelic drone rock brought to you by three fantastic underground groups – two local and one from Austin, TX.

Kicking off the evening was an unforgiving assault on the eardrum called Huge Rat Attacks. The group tore through the tracks of their soon-to-be-released album, Cougars, with blinding speed and wild abandon. Most impressively, Huge Rat Attack’s progressive songwriting structure lurks subtlety under their sheer wall of lush reverb, distortion and pain, leaving the listener to embark on their own aural journey only to be awakened by the sonic wail of a large hungry rodent on three hits of acid.

Huge Rat Attacks next plays the Uptown Bar w/the Chambermaids and Total Fucking Blood on Feb. 23. Artwork and final production are currently being finalized for Cougars.

The mystery band of the evening was Daughters of the Sun (basically a reconditioned Tora! Tora! Torrance!), who played an equally memorable set, although with emphasis more on notes than emotion. Nick Koenigs (singer/guitar) has a great vocal delivery and the songs found on the group’s new EP, Silver and Cream Demos (newly released last night), capture the live show fairly well. Favorite song: “Further.”

The Black Angels then headed up to the teeny Entry’s stage. Between their home-grown mantra of “Turn On, Tune In, Drone Out” and their self-proclaimed “Native American Drone ‘N’ Roll” genre, you just knew we were in for a treat.

With their name coming from the classic Velvet Underground tune “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” and apparent strong influences from Jefferson Airplane and the Doors, it was hard not to zone out.

Aside from perpetual complaining about mic reverb feedback, vocalist Alex Maas’ monotone, yet shapely vocals melded perfectly with the Angel’s mix of tribal drumming, keyboard/Mac droning and persistent tambourine - triggering uncontrollable psychedelic flashbacks in the first three rows of the venue.

The Black Angels’ self-titled 4 track EP is now available from Light in the Attic. It’s worth buying. It was $5 at the show.
Download the mp3 of Black Grease here.

Also, the group recently finished up music videos for “Black Grease” (stream, download [33MB]) and “Vietnam” (stream,
download[23MB]).