Twisted Tower Dire - Make It Dark

September 26, 2011

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The windows are down, the cool country air is blowing in, and Crest of the Martyrs is on the disc changer. The act is routine, exciting, and terrifying all the same: slow for the stoplight, exhausts burping and popping. Wait for traffic to clear, chirp the tires into first, and head left up over the short hill at half throttle. Clear the crest of the hill, give the car its legs, slam 2nd home, and see what the speedometer indicates while passing the little Methodist church at the bottom of the hill a quarter mile away. Turn up the stereo. Back off to 80 and drag a warm wave of V8 thunder and heavy metal across the sleepy Maryland countryside.

When he was 18 or so, my grandfather owned a 1950 Ford coupe. He bought it used in 195x, took it to a mechanic in a nearby town, and had the exhausts gutted. He would then drive the car back and forth down a particular back country road to visit his girlfriend, soon-to-be bride. Her father, predictably, was not impressed by the very loud, very black, and very racy automobile.

In between drives to visit his girl, my grandfather and his buddies would pile into the automobile, drive down that same particular road, and see how fast they could go down a particular stretch of hill past a little Methodist church.

Fast forward 52 years to the day after my grandfather told me about his youthful automotive indiscretions, and the fundamentals haven’t changed. The car is different, but it’s still black on black, and the exhausts are definitely not stock. The engine is still a big, American, muscular V8, even if mine makes a hell of a lot more power. I’m going to visit a ladyfriend, but we most definitely did not get married. The road has been repaved a few times, but it’s still just a bumpy strip of tarmac carving through a pleasant stretch of cornfields and forests.

All these things I did…was I being retro? I did them all before my grandfather told me about his similar misadventures. My other grandfather owned a black on black El Camino with far more motor from the factory than was reasonable or safe, and yet I also heard this story after my own exploits became known in the family.

Merriam Webster’s online dictionary defines retro as: “relating to, reviving, or being the styles and especially the fashions of the past : fashionably nostalgic or old-fashioned”.

My own actions were not nostalgic or old-fashioned, and yet they related to the past. I’d like to think that Twisted Tower Dire wrote and recorded Make It Dark (Cruz del Sur, 2011) with a similar mindset: they weren’t being fashionably nostalgic or old-fashioned, but stylistically, they are related to the past.

I didn’t ape my grandfather out of love or reverence, but because, on some level, the things he did are genetically encoded in me or were passed on by unconsciously as I was raised: I had no choice but to be retro. Twisted Tower Dire don’t copy Iron Maiden, Manowar, or Helstar. In fact, they really don’t copy at all, but they write songs with similar basic ingredients. The big, muscular, thundering riffs, the soaring, reach-for-the-sky vocals, and the instantly memorable choruses are all very old-fashioned, and they are all very good things. The new singer fits the music, has a great voice, and the band’s future is still bright. One important detail has changed: the production is bigger, shinier, louder, and clearer than the classics – but then again, my car was bigger, shinier, louder, and safer than my grandfather’s automobile. Retro is good, but the past wasn’t perfect.

Do Twisted Tower Dire have a choice, or is this style of metal genetically encoded on them at some level? No doubt they grew up listening to Iron Maiden, so do they have any choice in that it influenced them? Retro be damned, I couldn’t care less. This style of metal will always work.

— Richard Street-Jammer

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HEAR MAKE IT DARK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo7YrPh4UTQ

“The Stone”

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