The first thing you should know about Eternal Tapestry is that they fucking shred. I usually try not to cuss in reviews, but that is the first thing that came to mind and it is way too true to omit. They have proven this already with a slew of strong releases on Not Not Fun, Digitalis, and Night People, but I firmly believe they are about to blow the doors off of all that was done previously. At a recent show, despite the fact that there were only about eight people in the audience, they dragged out a set of behemoth rock abstractions with a visceral hendrixian swagger all too often missing from current rock shows. They weren't about to let the lack of an audience get to them though. A runaway train cares not if there is anyone aboard. Apparently they did have some crowds earlier in their tour because they where all out of both cds and tapes by the time this homecoming show took place. Luckily, I remembered that DNT had got both the cd-r and the tape into their distro earlier that week, and I did not hesitate to order both based on their mind melting performance.

Generally I would take this space to give a kind of track-by-track, or side-by-side breakdown of the recording, but since this is for both a cd and a tape, and they are both pretty much wall to wall awesome, I will spare you the redundancy of me telling you how rad everything is over and over. I will tell you this much. Both the cd and the tape, despite being from the same tour, are filled with completely different music. The cd is a more even studio style recording. It has a couple of long burners, and a handful of shorter ones that sometimes fade out because as you know, the tapestry is eternal for a reason and when they get to rocking they don't play games. The tape has a live vibe to it, complete with crowd hollering at the end of some of the songs. The sound is clear, and heavy as a tar pit, with the inclusion of some delayed out saxophone playing on the second side. Now I don't know how that looks to you on paper, but both on this tape, and at their recent live show, it sounds incredible. With all that fuzzed out dual guitar action lifting you into the stratosphere, the cool tones and echoed harmonies of the sax really add another highly satisfying texture that take things to an even more rarified air. On both recordings the riffs are huge, creating a perfect backdrop for the songs to take off from, and at the bottom of it all is the rock solid drumming that leaves one in constant flux between head banging and hip shaking. All told, both of these recordings, as well as the live performance recently witnessed, are epic in scope and grand in scale, and foretell great things in the future for this band. So keep an eye out. 9/10 -- Bryan King (24 June, 2009)