Black Feelings

Is it just me or is sneering no longer cool in rock? Not Johnny Rotten snotty, but John Lydon snide coolness that propelled PIL? Well, Montreal's Black Feelings channel the squint-eyed invectives and castle-storming propulsion of vintage post-punk, ranging from PIL to Bauhaus to This Heat. A special gold star to grail knight Owain Lawson, who doubles up on vocals and drums, flattening a path to your speakers. Bassist Brian Mitchell flaunts quadruple-jointed dexterity on his turbo-strumming runs. And Kyle Fostner (like Lawson, a former member of Les Angle Morts) irradiates the songs with both guitar and keyboards. Each track sounds like the chapters of an epic, with portent ("Lost Rings Pt.1" and "Lost Rings Pt. 2"), pride ("Golden Children") and haunted disquiet ("Gails"). It all adds up to work that will please cold wave, prog and post-punk fans of many stripes.