Like their fellow Alabamoids Rwake, Deadbird play somber, psychedelically-tinged sludge metal with both music and visual art that evokes dark backwoods mysticism, hard narcotics, animal totems, elemental forces and self-realization. It's heavier on the grey matter than yer typical Sabbath-plunderer, and all of these mystical overtones that both Rwake and Deadbird share are traceable back to the originators of crushing, spiritual metal, Neurosis. Both bands also share some of the same members, but beyond these common threads, Deadbird unveils a massive lumbering sound of their own on their second album Twilight Ritual. Six sprawling tracks, the shortest one nearly six minutes long. Crushing detuned guitars create an undertow of monstrous sludge that shifts in tempo from pummeling grooves to huge, apocalyptic dirges, sometimes erupting in energy into faster, thrashy crustcore. Huge weighty riffs are ground out over and over, while epic dual guitar harmonies soar overhead and the gutteral battlechants are stretched out and harmonized themselves. When in fully earthcrushing form, Deadbird suggest some alternate world where Neurosis and Crowbar merged into a single bulldozing force, equally epic and oppressive, punishingly heavy and mesmerizing. But there are other elements at work here that make Twilight Ritual more than just an exercise in gravitational pull: the plaintive clean guitar strum and Codeine-like slowcore parts, awesome, Maiden-esque guitar harmonies, somber acoustic folk ballads, proggy guitar lines and arrangements, the soulful, raw-throated singing. It's immense and despondant music with alternating shades of light and darkness, one of the more progressive (and more melodic) sludge metal albums that I've listened to lately. Awesome album art and layout from Baroness' John Baizley rounds this out, with a full color six-panel digipack package and stunning illustrations.