This split seems like a High School reunion done perfectly well. When some members of Utah‘s finest Post-Metal scene get their bands together to do a split it better be something like this fourth installment of the Legends of the Desert-series released by Desert Records. Eagle Twin and The Otolith give us near 40 minutes of new amazing music in four songs!
Desert Records started this series four years ago and they surely had some mighty interesting previous volumes: Vol. 1 had Palehorse/Palerider and Lord Buffalo, the Penitent Man and Cortége were featured on Vol. 2 and the last chapter was done solely by Fatso Jetson. This fourth volume is again done by two bands and this might be one of the most interesting combos out there and this could also be a match made in Veil of Sound heaven, as we had interviews with the Otolith as well as with Eagle Twin’s Gentry Densley and we also reviewed Folium Lumina as well as Asclepius, the last release Gentry’s other famous band Iceburn back in 2021. Thus – a dream combo for us!
And the release is not only awesome in the VoS-alumni sense, but also music-wise as the roots of both bands become very clearly audible, and it is also impossible to over-estimate the importance of the little differences here. Where Eagle Twin embellish their sound with a lot of fuzzy distortion, the Otolith make good use of the Gothic attributions connected with their multiple classical string instruments. It is also clear that the fuzzy warmth of the two Eagle Twin tracks are more clearly connected to the day in the desert, while the Otolith sound like the evening variant. Gentry’s raspy vocals sound like a cowboy’s after 40 years of outdoor work, lots of booze in the gin joints across multiple state lines and millions of cigarettes necessary to soothe the jangled nerves of someone having to care for thousands of animals. The powerful sludge songs carry the opening of the record from the open range at noon slowly to the enclosed pastures in the early evening hours. Then the Otolith take over and we get to listen to two tracks full of wonderful doomy Gothic allure; the difference between the elegant, female vocals and Gentry’s raspy, rough voice are underlined and the harsh bellows by Levi and Matt, the male members of the Otolith form a wonderful link between both bands. The fine violin melodies by Kim and Sarah (both of SubRosa fame, as well as some other band members) carry the tracks from one part to the next and one can see the wind bending the trees around the livestock enclosure somewhere along the trail from the farm to the slaughterhouses.
The combination of Eagle Twin’s Blues-based Sludge-meets-Gospel-and-Folk and the somewhat Celestial Gothic Metal delivered by the Otolith are truly a great combo and also represent the idea behind the series to the fullest. If one had to paint a split record by two bands from the same region, with similar roots but clear distinctive traits, you might end up with Legends of the Desert: Vol. 4!
