Texas Platters

The Iron Kite

No Eyebrows (Twilight Flight Sound)

For those who know (but don't want to reveal themselves), the term "Iron Kite" is taken from a Dungeons & Dragons-esque online video game called RuneScape; an "iron kite shield" is a type of armor that's supposed to ward off harm. In musical terms, that translates into this Austin threepiece preferring amp-to-amp combat in the form of a 45-minute extendo-jam called No Eyebrows. Recorded live at Beerland last fall, the single-track disc offers plenty of weirdness, complete with colorful, slightly creepy cover art. The first seven minutes is all singer/guitarist Shawn McMillen's (also of local space cases Rubble) tribal grunts and screams and ritualistic percussion courtesy of Blake Carlisle, which then skitters into a 20-minute Texas-style cage jam. There are lots of paranoid, scattershot tempo changes and a few fist-in-the-air moments where the whole thing seems to congeal before separating. The rest vibrates between bassist B.C. Smith's low-end skewering and the squall of deranged black and blue noise. McMillen's birth grunts reappear later, capsizing under the waves of feedback. It's ear splitting, disorderly, shambolic – an exercise in wormhole etiquette. And these guys are way more interesting live than some chainmail-clad ponce mining for coal in Crandor.