This slab of vinyl is perfectly on point in referencing metal twice in its title. Heather Leigh Murray's pedal steel, the cornerstone of Taurpis Tula's sound and energy drenches both of this album's sides in metallic offal. From rust to the molten spread of wet metal to the hiss of megalithic spear-tip in water, this is amongst their heaviest (and best recorded) work yet.
The majestically titled "Judas the Lion" begins with the sound of running Daydream Nation through a shredder with the needle still on the grooves, and builds from there. The charges of notes from Murray and David Keenan's guitar surge like great girders of steel growing from the earth, their roots buckling the forest floor around them. There are moments of cloud nine when the music feels like it'll invert in on itself, with things slow down enough to hear the dream machine grind of the guitar and Murray ghostly strum. Alex Neilson's percussion plays it solid and steady while still managing to avoid an actual static tempo. The spine buckling and snapping like a crash test meat and bone bodybag going through windscreen after windscreen. Taking a triple fingered pinch of doom metal's aesthetic in with their psych side worship, this side alone feels like it is lighting up pyres across the mountain tops.
"This Narrow Way" is a wilder, windier tale and the spikier of the two sides. The song's audio trails flashing across the line of visions and staying there, the musical layers riding each other in quick-speed rot. The harmonica played here should have offered softer textures, instead its brass reeds acid scratched with psychedelic line drawings. This is the best record this year for getting vanished to.
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