Eagle Twin’s Review
The Feather Tipped…
the Serpent’s Scale

So man cried, but with God’s voice.
And God bled, but with man’s blood.

– From Ted Hughes’ Crow

Fitting that Margaret is with me now. Sitting obliquely over my left shoulder, writing her review of the Wino & Connie Ochs show we went to last week. Fitting because it was she – my Gretchen, my Margarita – who introduced me to Eagle Twin; put “Murder of . . . ” on a mixtape (which, yes, actually was a tape); whose hits, by the way, also included: “Zig Zag Wanderer” by Sgt. Meathead, “Dollar Bill Blues” by Beatus Van Zandt, “Clones (We Are All)” by Al Cooper, & “Lizzy” by Melvins. If you’re still not Googling after her desperately, let me further brag that “Dethroned Emeperor” opened side B. But it was the song after that classic that got me. This fucking dirge-y riff deluged the interior of my Buick, and these crazy didgeridoo vocals thundered from the speakers, and I remember I looked over at the girl sitting next to me, the compiler of these songs, the chooser of this song in particular, and I got a real serious boner. Like an impediment to my driving kind of hard-on. “You are my compass” a voice called from beyond. “Who is this?” I asked, indifferent to possibly approaching poserdom. “Eagle Twin” she shouted back.

Now, almost three years after hearing them for the first time, I’m reviewing Eagle Twin’s sophomore and final* album, The Feather Tipped the Serpent’s Scale. Plainly speaking, this record fucking kills! At least one of your parents will like it. Whichever one turned you on to Black Sabbath. If you only have one and he or she is more a fan of John Mayer or The Whispers, then just play it at the gravesite of your dead one’s. Your back to the earth that holds the remains of your deceased parent, staring up into the sky,  – day or night, doesn’t matter, people have different schedules, I understand that. But surely this record will speak to you; it will say: “I am become endless death. I am become again, again, again.”

Read this rest os the kick ass review after the jump!

“I am a brother to dragons!” I sang that brunch the other morning, making my voice so low and gravelly it gave me a brief coughing fit right there in the vegan cake line. Margaret turned around and smiled, gave me that look like “babe, we’re in public.” “Gentry’s vocals are so hollow and deep!” I exclaimed over our blackbean burgers with pineapple salsa. “Definitely,” she said, catching an orange salsa chunk that rolled down her chin, “It’s got a real Tom Waits feel to it.” I can see that. And I told her I agreed completely. “It’s like early to mid-90s Melvins with some like holistic moments, somewhere between Earth and Om, but way darker,” I told T-Bird, who’s himself a labelmate with Eagle Twin. When T-Bird’s not flying low for Heartless or Masakari, he busses tables at Zenith, whose vegan brunch Marge and I attend religiously every Sunday. The Feather Tipped the Serpent’s Scale is the kind of record you talk with your girlfriend about over brunch, even though there are like five other people at the table who aren’t really into Metal and don’t care to understand how Eagle Twin is heavier than The Body, gnarlier than Big Business and more interesting than Dark Castle. Completely aware I was being an attention hog, I still felt inclined to rave about this record. It’s the kind of album that makes you resort to hyperbole when you interrupt your friends while they’re at work to tell them about why they absolutely have to check it out. Here’s an album that slithers towards the mighty throne that is my favorite record of the year, upon which Pallbearer hitherto comfortably sat. The grey wizard that represents Sorrow & Extinction in my imagination can certainly hold his own against this monster, but he’s not expecting the fallen, blackened serpent. And really, few are.

Even nowadays bands somehow remain obscure. The times ain’t much different than those days lamented by the old heads. Nothing’s changed about how we anticipate band’s new records or debuts, I try to to tell them. And there’s way more to being a great band than just riding internet hype. Some great bands still remain widely unknown. Usually, and unfortunately, it’s the erudite and thought-provoking bands like Eagle Twin. The bands that refuse taxonomy and spurn casual listeners. But where The Unkindess of Crows might’ve circled like a murder of black dots overhead the mammoth carcasses of Wavering Radiant and Dimensional Bleedthrough and The Great Cessation and Crack This Guy and all those other albums people glutted and reveled in in ’09, The Feather Tipped the Serpent’s Scale will slide down from the branches, poke its bifurcated tongue in your face, and hiss: “The gods in the garden if they were not snakes they were the writhing and thrust of eve’s own lust.”

*According to the Thanks section of The Feather Tipped the Serpent’s Scale: “This album marks the conclusion of a deep, sometimes dark, shared personal journey for all involved. And marks the beginning of a bright, fiery new future heralded by the birth of the Smith twins, Rowan and Adler.”