The Blacks only existed for a short time, yet their mission on this earth was clear: to show the rest of us the way forward. Now the bi-coastal trio is no more, disbanded after two and a half years, a couple dozen songs, even more hangovers. But they left this, Tiger Songs, an instructional relic that is what all rock music should be - loud, melodic, heavy, and fanatical. Single “Gravitas” packs all these elements with aplomb. Like Queens of the Stone Age fronted by Shirley Manson, this four-minute juggernaut struts on dark guitar dissonance and a menacing descending riff. The shout-along bridge particularly thrills, thanks in no small part to the maniacal howling of backing vocalist/tambourine mastermind JDK Blacker who, by all accounts, plays his oft-derided instrument like a disciple of jangle following commands from on high. Follow-up garage rocker “Sunday Boys” chases the stomping anthem with a shot of sinister reverb and chopped-up electro grooves, while “White Girl” plays on in-your-face confrontation between Gavin Black’s violent skin-pounding and Luisa Black’s wailing beat-down of a vocal delivery. “Walking Through Walls,” though, injects all the aggression with a pertinent dose of punk-sage insight - “Pass it on, pass it on my dear/don’t you wait till the end is near.” For this band, the end is now, and so they depart with words of wisdom, songs on the straight and narrow, and this as epitaph: many more renowned, few more zealous, none more black.

- Robert J. Hilson