TWIN GOD: BrooklynVegan Premieres “You And I” (Death Of The Twin)

 

Nefarious Industries prepares to release Deaths, the debut EP from Jersey City, New Jersey/Brooklyn, New York-based trio TWIN GOD. With the record’s street date now only a week-and-a-half away, BrooklynVegan is hosting a premiere of the track “You And I (Death Of The Twin).”

 

Uniting founding guitarist/vocalist Bryan Elkins with bassist Ed Charreun and drummer Felipe Torres, the influence of heavy innovators like Big Business, Black Cobra, and Botch infiltrate TWIN GOD‘s sludge metal/noise rock hybrid approach. Torres’ drumming and Charreun’s bass were recorded by Charreun at his home studio, Radon Waves. Elkins’ guitars were tracked with original drummer Mike Tarlazzi at his studio, Chromium Homes. The vocals were self-recorded by Elkins, parallel parked in Brooklyn in his mom’s Honda CRV on a laptop during the height of NYC’s coronavirus shutdown. Elkins mixed the tracks at home, which were then mastered by Colin Marston at Menegroth, The Thousand Caves.

 

With the premiere of “You And I (Death Of The Twin),” Elkins offers, “This song’s lyrics handle the central mythos behind the name TWIN GOD, so it was important to me to release a solid recording of it. To sum it up real quick, science fiction author Philip K. Dick had these sort of world-shattering mystical experiences that really defined his last few years of life, and he wrote volumes trying to make sense of what was happening to him, drawing on the whole of philosophy, psychology, religious thought, the occult. So, I was really into this for years and then one day I realized, after hearing part of an interview with his mom, that there was actually a psychological root to a lot of it, a family tragedy — the death of his twin — that he really had no control over but still blamed himself for. And this one essential detail, I don’t think he mentioned it himself anywhere in all that obsessive writing, though I could be wrong. So, he struggled endlessly, but also may have avoided the key because the thing he was seeking was the same thing that caused him so much pain. So, the song is an attempt to reflect on that and process it, from his perspective. But really, it’s my attempt to make sense of a story that I’ve always been baffled by.”

 

BrooklynVegan writes with the song’s premiere, “The EP’s got two songs, one of which is the seven-minute “You And I (Death Of The Twin),” which premieres in this post. It’s got some strong hints of Leviathan-era Mastodon, but TWIN GOD shake things up with a Neurosis/Godspeed-style post-rock mid-section too.”

 

 

 

TWIN GOD, conceived in 2016 as Bryan Elkins’s heavy new beginning, took a turn from the elaborate riff-stacking of his previous metal band In Musth to a sharper focus on concise songwriting, eventually taking shape with the same musicians he had collaborated with for most of his adult life. Ed Charreun plays bass, Felipe Torres handles the drums. Noise rock, math rock, and sludge metal are woven into a backdrop for mania, words screamed hellishly raw through sickening anthems of self-scrutiny, archetypal dissection, and endless bile for the cruel. The band is good live. Maybe live shows will be a thing again someday.

 

With their debut EP, Deaths, the band’s storytelling reaches in opposing extremes to pointed effect regarding, you guessed it, two deaths. Musically, both tracks evoke chasms and dread like a feeling of falling, but for very different reasons. In the untethered rage of “Animate,” the artist’s wishful thinking calls on an unnamed woman to murder her (real life) serial predator husband, whereas in “You And I,” a man confronts a foundational loss – the death of his twin – and a resulting lifetime of guilt.

 

  

Review copies of Deaths are now available. Please send all review, interview, and other coverage inquiries for TWIN GOD to dave@earsplitcompound.com.