“Take the time to know me / Take the time to sit down / And I’ll tell you my story / What’s lost can be found” sing a passionate Twin Flames in the song “Outcast,” one of the more powerful performances to be observed on their new album Omen. Offering a genuine Album of the Year candidate with gusto, Twin Flames’ Omen is driven home by tracks like “Outcast,” its lumbering title track, epic epilogue “Giants (Reprise)” and star single “Battlefields,” and for all intents and purposes feels like more of a conceptual folk-rock opera than it does anything of the realm of plain pop music.
WEBSITE: https://www.twinflamesmusic.com/
There’s a lot of emphases on texture throughout the tracklist – “Without Tears,” “Grace Too,” “Giants,” “Follow Me” and “Shadows” each have a lot of wallop to their instrumental faceting despite the moderate tempos and softer harmonies they support, creating contrast and anti-artificialities in the essence of the music itself. On some level, I think it’s likely Twin Flames did this purposefully with the intent of keeping some reflection of their aesthetical roots, knowing that the overall step towards a more mainstream rock sound would be difficult for some of their longtime fans to understand.
The vocal harmonies in “Shadows, “Human,” “Giants” and “Pisuppunga” are absolutely spellbinding and definitely worthy of as much attention as that of the single “Battlefields” is going to get this month, and that simply isn’t something I’ve been able to say about a lot of deep cuts lately. This has been quite the filler-packed summer among mainstream releases in the United States and Canada, but for Twin Flames, inviting that kind of junk into the mix was never something they considered, and that’s more than obvious when listening to the final product here.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Omen-Twin-Flames/dp/B08GCKKRHX
Expectedly accessible in some moments while profoundly affective and devastatingly personal in others, I don’t know that many hardcore music fans are going to be able to put down Twin Flames’ Omen once they’ve picked it up for the first time. Since getting into “Battlefields,” I’ve found myself revisiting the complete tracklist of the LP again and again for a better understanding of, and appreciation for, the story it seeks to impart to the world. It’s a record you peel back in layers bit by bit, and for my money, it’s absolutely one of the only albums I would call requited listening regardless of your taste in music right now.
Gwen Waggoner
