ZapTown

Eagle Twin
The Unkindness of Crows
Southern Lord Records
Rating 3.5 out of 5
Links:

Eagle Twin on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/eagletwin
Southern Lord Records homepage: http://www.southernlord.com/

The Unkindness of Crows is an epic, slow jam metal masterwork. The tracks all follow a “crow” theme as set up by the album title: dark, mysterious, and foreboding.

Although Salt Lake City’s own heavy noisecore collective, Iceburn, wasn’t known for their vocals, fans will find that Eagle Twin sounds familiar: both bands are fronted by Gentry Densley.

Percussionist Tyler Smith is the other half of Eagle Twin (twin – get it?), beating on the drums and brass like they owe him a lot of money. This release sounds a bit like Danzig on Quaaludes, but with better songwriting and much better lyrics (and without a singer hiding a napoleon complex).

The track “In The Beginning Was The Scream” starts vocally with Tuvan throat singing styled by growls, conjuring up pissed off Russian herdsmen sporting black hoodies, wielding drop-d guitars, and kicking ass. I can smell the spilled alcohol and dirty pot in the pit already. Indeed, Gentry uses this mean vocal style throughout the record, adding much drama to the mix. His voice becomes more of an instrument perfectly tuned to the band, weaving in and out like a separate guitar track.

Though the album is only a  7-song LP, The Unkindness of Crows still comes in at an hour in length, with some tracks droning on for over ten minutes. While I get the importance of this genre needing longer songs to work right, I found the length of some songs a bit much. That said, “Carry on, King of Carrion,” coming in at 6+ minutes long, strangely seems to fly by. Now normally, long songs like these don’t sit well with my classic-punk rock trained ears, but it works well on this album.

Great album, it stays on my iPod. It will be great for zoning out while working on art. Recommended for fans of Godflesh, Iceburn, etc.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (16.7MB)