When Black Flag grew their hair long and started to play five and six minute-long songs complete with lengthy guitar solos, some in the crew-cutted macho punk scene were scandalized. Were these icons of hardcore letting the hippies win the culture war? Well, Greg Ginn made no secret that he was both a Deadhead and a Ramones fan all at once.

More than a generation later, Los Angeles’ Ancestors play rock in a similar vein of syncretism. The songs are generally long, as in 13-plus minutes long, and sewn together with synthesizer music that could have been taken from the soundtrack of a Nova special on the life of bacteria.

Each song is a genre-bending epic in which you can hear disparate echoes of Fugazi, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Finland’s funeral-doom kings, Skepticism. Intense and at times lugubrious, the songs take their own sweet time, giving the finger to those behind them who would dare honk their horns.

Grade: B+



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