Feast on Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at Vinyl

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is on tour in support of "Specter at the Feast."

There’re times when the record sounds as if the band put bricks on their distortion pedals, cultivating noise and dissonance like they were cash crops.

And in the past, they have been for the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, who once suffered endless Jesus and Mary Chain comparisons for the meticulously crafted dins they were fond of conjuring.

But that was then, and now the band is touring behind “Specter at the Feast,” their alternately haunting and jarring, reflective and bracing new record. Frontman Peter Hayes pins listeners to the wall with his guitar on more quarrelsome tunes like “Rival” and “Teenage Disease,” but elsewhere the band gets more ruminative and introspective, most likely a result of the passing of bassist Robert Been’s father, Michael, who fronted The Call and died after suffering a heart attack while working sound at a BRMC gig in 2010.

“Why won’t you lose yourself?” Hayes asks at album’s end, sounding as if he’s in the process of doing just that.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.