Twingiant - Devil Down

By Matt Hinch. Are you ready to get down? Devil Down that is, the newest from Phoenix foursome Twingiant. One can feel the desert winds blowing through their southern-fried stoner sludge

Written by Matt Hinch.


Are you ready to get down? Devil Down that is, the newest from Phoenix foursome Twingiant. One can feel the desert winds blowing through their southern-fried stoner sludge.

It starts off eezy breezy but soon enough the chugging rhythms and foot-stompin' riffs take hold and drive the listener into the dust. But there's a balance to be had here as well. As primal as it can be, especially the rhythm section, the guitars are surprisingly deft and able to rend the sky in two with emotional lead that dance through the cool night air.

It's heavy as a lead weight but instead of being full-on sludge, Twingiant take you on a retro, hard rockin' ride across the black top laid down decades ago. "Through the Motions" features some seriously sweet licks and an old-school, stoner/psych vibe amid its hardened rhythms. "Tiger Lily" hints at The Sword with striking guitar harmonies and were it not for the fiery bellows it would definitely seem to come from another time.

Speaking of that bellow, it's nasty. It's like vocalist/bassist Jarrod Le Blanc didn't just drink the whiskey, but chewed up and swallowed the broken glass too and growls through the bubbling blood at the back of his throat. On "Daisy Cutter" though, during the instrumental section one may think Twingiant could do without a singer at all until the beastly roar obliterates any notion of the thought.

Twingiant weave through an array of tempos to infiltrate the mind and soul of the listener. Jeff Ramon pummels with as much venom as Le Blanc and his amp-wrecking bass. Tony Gallegos and Nikos Mixas work in tandem to keep the listener both grounded and weightless. Their solos are more about evoking feeling than dazzling with technically.

Devil Down is an unassuming and honest album barreling through the desert, choking on the dust but maintaining a zest for fueling a retro-styled trip. Muscle meets melody, retro meets the roar and we'll gladly follow the Devil Down below the horizon with the setting sun's glow in our face.

Twingiant - Sin Nombre

Written by Ulla Roschat.


This 5 track Ep “Sin Nombre” of the four piece band Twingiant fom Phoenix/Arizona is that kind of music that makes me turn the volume knob up to eleven and gets me on my feet and move - headbang, dance, play air guitar, shout and growl along - in other words: it’s the kind of music for my neighbors to peek through my window for their regular confirmation I’m still nuts.

“Sin Nombre” is the band’s second release (April 2013) and like its predecessor “Mass Driver” (April 2012) the EP delivers a high dosage of warm fuzzy low end desert rock combined with raw brutal heavy sludge. This is an intriguing combination granted, but to give my neighbors their spectacle it needs more than that. Twingiant keep the mix in a constant tension that’s slowly moving swirling and rolling between, rather than boldly contrasting, a laid back attitude of bluesy desert rock and punishing heaviness. The songs are carefully structured, dynamic build-ups provide depth and color and give each song its own zip and mood. Be it the many changes in rhythm and tempo, the breathtaking guitar solos, the powerful “beard & whiskey” vocals or the voice samples accompanied by dynamic rhythms dramatically supporting their eerie atmosphere.

This is what makes “Palisnero” a straightforward rolling groovy killer that severs your head from your body with a sludge machete so sharp you don’t even notice you’re dead until the voice sample of Richard Kuklinski talking about hate... This is what makes “Fossilized”, despite its entrancing repetitive underlying rhythm, a most varied and dynamic trip with many surprising changes, breaks and guitar solos... This is what makes “La Haine” a heavy monster, again with a voice sample, this time of a French movie with the same title... This is what makes “Cloaked in Black” a boiling cauldron of some spacey doomy bluesy sticky stuff... and this is what makes “Sin Nombre” the perfect “neighbor-confirmation-of-my-still-being nuts” music.

The last track “Ricky X R.I.P.” is not a song, but a homage to the late Rick Martinez (I’m writing this with a lump in my throat), host of the Wreckage Metal Radio Show.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]