Black Mountain's Year Zero soundtrack is nothing less than the band's full, balls-out glory distilled down to one dense, 45-minute acid tab of music. Featuring five new songs and five previously released songs, the Year Zero soundtrack weaves crunching, analog psych metal; futuristic droneouts; and, somehow, a twisted saxaphone ditty.

So how on earth does a band like Black Mountain end up writing music in the name of the world's sunniest sport?

Understand, Year Zero is nothing like your ordinary bro-time surfer flick. Shot around the world on 16mm film, Year Zero is set in a near-ish future where the world as we know it has ended. Director Joe G. places the survivors in a damaged but stunningly beautiful place, a world where the reset button has been hit, where we hold onto the vestiges of the things we love, but those things become weightless, and the ensuing freedom is as exhilarating as it is scary. To simply call it post-apocalyptic is to undermine the imagination that Joe G. brings to the world's remains, and Year Zero is ultimately as much a "surf movie" as it is a movie about Earth illustrated through surfing.

Given the new world set forth in Year Zero, it's as if Black Mountain have been set free of the boundaries that "making a record" impose. Much of the new material is driven by expansive, synth-driven swirls and a dangerous, rumbling low end. Outlaw vibes, to be sure. Black Mountain's psychedelia has never been anchored to any one style, time, or genre. But with Year Zero, Black Mountain go to a place that is intergalactic and downright ruthless, with a sound big enough to stand up to the vastness of the ocean, the bigness of the sun, and the lives of the people left living. Which is fucked up and heavy, no question, but so goes Joe G.'s vision, and thanks to Year Zero, now we know: Black Mountain could actually pull off being the last band on earth.

(JAG220 released: 04/03/12)