With a bill of Suuns and The Black Angels, you know you’re in for a night of darkness. Unfortunately, the darkness only really worked for one band at Lee’s Palace on April 14. Montreal’s Suuns took to the stage first with their fascinating, gritty art-rock. They started off their set a bit messily, working into the nooks and crannies of the heavier guitar-driven parts of their album Zeroes QC. After a few songs, when they got more into the electronic-led songs such as “Arena” and “Up Past the Nursery,” the set was pulled together splendidly and they twisted into the rest of the material.

With a front man who keeps his jaw tight when he sings, a drummer who brings the “oomph” when you least expect it, a bassist/guitarist who usually keeps his busy fingers in the background and a multi-instrumentalist (but mostly synth player) who is the most occupied in noise, they make for a really interesting band to see live.

But while the audience seemed pretty perplexed by Suuns’ art-rock concentration and mysterious presence, they were up in arms for The Black Angels, an Austin-based psychedelic, blues-rock party-hardy quintet; the younger brother of other (and better) Blacks, The Black Lips and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

The band played through their most recent album, Phosphene Dream, as well as previous material. They rarely stopped, and honestly, it’s all a buzzy blur. Every song kept enveloping into the next with the same kind of sound and not much to keep things more interesting. The crowd seemed to love it in the mosh pit/crowd surfing/high-fiving/fist pumping capacity that’s fine for hits like “Haunting at 1300 McKinley” and “Telephone,” but those actions and the slow-paced strobe light persisted for the entire dragged-out set. And there’s nothing memorable about what the band members did as they all retreated into putting on this spectacle. It’d at least be more fun (not to completely knock on getting excited at a show like that) if the music had more weight to it.

The Black Angels are much more fitting for a bigger venue or an outdoor concert, while Suuns confronted the darkness and at least probably came away from the show with a lot more fans.