After enjoying quite a bit of acclaim over their 2005 debut, The Head and the Heart, Arkansas sludge/doom wrecking crew
Deadbird began recording their second album in late 2006, but were sidetracked for months on end after losing their second guitarist and bassist in quick succession. By the time that sophomore effort,
Twilight Ritual, finally made it onto record store shelves in the summer of 2008, many fans of the first disc had probably left the band for dead, but high caliber prog-sludge behemoths like "Into the Clearing," "The Riverbed," and the title cut are bound to change that, while confirming the band's career resurrection. Often tipping the scales at anywhere from seven to ten minutes a piece (the unusually energetic, hardcore-infused "Feral Flame" being the only exception at five minutes), the above traverse a daunting range of moods and speeds, contrasting earthshaking doom rumblings with plaintive melodic passages, and prevailing throat lacerating growls with clean singing morsels (not always entirely effective, it should be noted). And even though much has been made of
Deadbird's connections to cross-state musical soul brothers,
Rwake -- a band vocalist/guitarist Chuck Schaaf briefly played with in 2002 -- those comparisons (often justified by brief snatches like the circular guitar melodies in "Death of the Self," or the clean solo nestled within the ruling distortion maelstrom of "Rule Discordia") are frequently overruled by
Deadbird's own, eminently engaging songwriting. Plus,
Rwake hardly invented the sludge/doom genre themselves so, all things considered,
Twilight Ritual easily stands up close to the highest genre standards, on its own merit. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia