And the music? Brain-meltingly ravishing and scarily intoxicating and loaded with moments of pure primal howl, bless its furiously pumping little heart. The title says it all: by turns haunted and downright confrontational, Directions to See a Ghost presents the six-piece staring into the face of trouble and yet still egging it on. Along with the aforementioned old guard of bad vibe-making, the Black Angels display a strong affinity for the sounds of two '80s ambassadors of the drone and the surge: Spacemen 3 and the Jesus And Mary Chain. Much of the disc's unstoppable garage-chug momentum shares a serious kinship with the former's Sound of Confusion and Perfect Prescription albums (both Glass/Fire), while the combination of white noise and pop melody at times evokes the latter's Psychocandy (Blanco y Negro/Sire).

And since we're bandying about mid-'80s reference points, plenty of guitarist Christian Bland's sinuous lines recall those of David Roback on Opal's 1987 masterwork of moody-mystics, Happy Nightmare Baby (SST). Whereas the lyrical offerings of Spacemen 3 were mainly of the distinctly drug-gospel variety, and while Psychocandy delivered songs of girls and boredom in wonderfully disaffected ways, the Black Angels keep their songwriting swaddled in metaphors, in unspecified threats and lingering images. (Much like the work on Opal's landmark, woefully-out-of-print one-off, I might add.)

Every now and then a hint of the band's politics come to the surface - or, so I'm guessing, based on the occasional turn of phrase which strikes my peacenik ears as antiwar sentiment, anyway - but overall, the six-piece prefers to leave things cryptically doomy, much to their benefit. A great deal of the cloud-cover can be attributed to vocalist Alex Maas' gloriously needling high-register vocals, full of menace and nag - echoes of Clinic's Ade Blackburn, perhaps. Every now and then, though, Maas drops it down a notch and I swear I pick up a slight Nico chill to the air. While he might be technically described of having little range, he makes wonderful use of it, enunciating with spine-tingling clarity and sometimes leaping into blood-rushing howls to tremendous effect. Maas knows how to let it all go, as evidenced on album opener "You on the Run," a thunder-bass powered prowl sure to enrapture fans of early Black Rebel Motorcycle Club with its leather-jacket strut and lyrics about life on the outside. While screaming might be the lingua franca of sonic badassery, sometimes it's just plain played out. Not so for these guys - here, the scream is inevitable, and Maas makes every one of them count.

Top points for skin-crawling go to "Science Killer," a truly formidable lurch composed of crazed-echo guitars, caveman bass gurgles, and a repetitive shaker-rhythm that resembles frantic scratching (at what? I shudder to think.) On paper, the song's final words, "Keep it in your head / keep it in your heart" might come across as advice of inspiration, but instead they come across as pure evil intent. The mood is lightened somewhat on the sitar-streaked "Deer-Ree-Shee," a perfect triangulation between Brian Jones-era Stones, the jumped-up nerves of Clinic, and, curiously, the heavy-shoegaze pummeling of quiet-as-of-late Norwegians Serena Maneesh. Here, when Maas declares, "let's get together and drink until noon / let's get together and dream," it actually feels more like an invite and less of a threat, unlike many of the disc's other commands and solicitations.

"Never/Ever" is the disc's grandest psychedelic odyssey, an eight-and-a-half sonic overdrive that starts off with an ominous rolling-tom rhythm and dark textures similar to the earliest Sonic Youth recordings before shifting gears into a churning, thumping "Sister Ray" hypnotic-squall. Listen carefully, and in the background there are the faintest bubbles of organ which recall the trippy electric jug playing of the 13th Floor Elevators' Tommy Hall - nice nod to their Austinite godfathers! Looking for another Texan tribute? Check out the unhurried glide of "The Return" - there, among the woo-hoo calls, the hot-summer vocal delivery, and steady rolling rhythm, are the sounds of millions and millions of little legs rubbing against each other. Crickets. Leave it to the Black Angels to integrate insects into the white noise and somehow manage to make them sound malignant in the process.

THE BLACK ANGELS
With The Warlocks
June 7, 9 p.m., $15
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421