Eagle Twin - "The Unkindness of Crows" CD Review (Southern Lord)

DOWNLOAD: Eagle Twin - "Murder Of..." (MP3)

Eagle Twin, who is a fairly new band based out of Salt Lake City, have their debut CD out on Southern Lord and it epitomizes the word HEAVY. The band is a two-piece composed of Gentry Densley (Ascend, Iceburn) on vocals/baritone guitar and and Tyler Smith on drums. While Iceburm evolved into an avant-jazz band, there is none of Iceburn's jazz/classical music influences here as The Unkindness of Crows is a 60+ minute slab of slow, monolithic stoner doom.

A good point of comparison for Eagle Twin's debut disc is The Melvins' Lysol. There is something of a pagan/tribal feel to the music as Tyler Smith beats out a hypnotic mantra while Gentry Densley layers in his dissonant guitar work, which ranges from sustained and twisted down-tuned notes (that can rise and fall like a roller coaster) and crashing tidal-wave sized riffs. Densley's vocals are crystal clear, almost spoken word, and there is no mistaking the menance in some of the stories he tells. Similar to the latest efforts from Sunn O))) and Earth, producer Randall Dunn captures the band's sound cleanly and lets the listener feel each crashing guitar riff. With the open and atmopheric production, The Unkindness of Crows comes across like the dark twin of Earth.

Lyrically, Eagle Twin focuses on animal mysticism with their primary attention being on crows. In a recent interview with The Aquarian, Gentry Densley said: "Well, I work in a jail library. I work in the jail giving people books, I’m the librarian. We used to have a copy of Ted Hughes’ The Crow. It’s a book of poems. He was poet laureate in Britain before he died, married to Sylvia Plath who wrote some awesome poems as well and The Bell Jar. I picked that up and the language of the poems would always suggest the music to me, the rhythm would give me riff ideas, and it came from that as well, but the lyrical ideas started meaning more to me and it seems like he takes all sorts of world myths and biblical things and imposes onto his crow character. I thought that was really interesting that you could take these universal myths and embody them into one character, just show how it all connects. So that started to interest me a lot more and so I started using the crow as my own variation on that character. Making up my own stories about him and stuff."

Eagle Twin was invited to open for all of Sunn O)))'s shows this year and the current tour finished up at the end of September. Here are some videos from the band's in-store performance at Vintage Vinyl and their show at Brooklyn Masonic.





Links:
Eagle Twin's MySpace Profile

Eagle Twin: In-Store Performance and Signing at Vintage Vinyl Tomorrow Night (Southern Lord)

DOWNLOAD: Eagle Twin - "Murder Of..." (Southern Lord)

Eagle Twin is a new Southern Lord signee who is part of the current Sunn O))) tour. The band has a day off between the show in Philadelphia (tonight) and Brooklyn (Tuesday) so they have scheduled an in-store performance and signing tomorrow night at Vintage Vinyl. The performance starts at 7PM and Vintage Vinyl is located at 51 Lafayette Rd., Fords, NJ 08863.

Eagle Twin features guitarist/vocalist Gentry Densley (Formerly of Salt Lake City's Iceburn and Ascend) and drummer Tyler Smith. The band just released their debut, The Unkindness of Crows, on Southern Lord which was recorded with producer Randall Dunn (Earth, Sunn O))), Stone Gossard, Ascend).

Links:
Eagle Twin's MySpace Profile