file under Black Mountain

Originally released in March 2003, this JWAB re-issue of their third album is essentially the band that became Black Mountain. Featuring principals Stephen McBean and Josh Wells alongside the distinctive and haunting vocals of newcomer Amber Webber, and bassist Christoph Hoffmeister. The live edition of Jerk With A Bomb also featured Black Halo/Black Mountain bassist Matt Camirand, so in essence the only difference between Black Mountain and Pyrokinesis era Jerk was the later addition of keyboardist Jeremy Schmidt.

With their third album, Pyrokinesis, and last before they morphed into the band currently known as Black Mountain, Vancouver, Canada's Jerk With A Bomb have evolved into an outfit that defies easy categorization. Try to imagine the folksy melancholia of Smog if Callahan had a jones for the Queens of the Stone Age's proggy, bottom-end stoner rock. Understanding the adage that "familiarity breeds contempt", Jerk With A Bomb draw the listener in with comfortable lilting melodies only to twist them, sharpening the edges, so that the song is reborn as something new and unexpected. Pyrokinesis showcases a band crafting songs with confidence, a band that knows when to lay low in stark, simple rhythms and when to storm ahead with guns blazing. And through it all, the drawling, yelping vocals paint a mined lyrical landscape torn asunder by the complicated politics of love, apathy and misdirected passions.

Did anybody hear of plague in this town? There's a new disease is going around. It's called isolation and everyone is getting it, even the rich. They locked their doors, figuring they'd wait for the payback to pass, but it hasn't. No, the plague has settled in, like a worm in the wood. The symptoms are all here - the detached coolness, the vacuous streets - near perfect chambers for songs to the dead man.

Hey dead man, the still world is changing. Pay up, or you got no sound. This record was due like the birth of a new Messiah. We seen it coming but now that it here, what are we gonna do? Celebrate the hymns, dead man, because you sure need something. Goodbye and go to work, jerks.