To get on the hype of The Tirith, especially when the band is in as rare form as it is slinking through 10 tracks of esoteric, clandestine material as populate its latest album, Quetzalcoatl, takes a lot. Even just as a listener, that is. Beware before digging too deep into this affair, which is business that’s about as serious as it gets on recordings in this zeitgeist.

You wouldn’t be wrong for playing it on full moons, just before or prior to the witching hour (to say nothing of during it), or just when you’re by yourself, brooding.

These fellas spare nothing on this long player beginning, innocently enough, with the artwork that depicts a serpent, coiled about a pyramid, and a mauve sky, a smoky backdrop that’s richly rendered in nearly all of the songs. It’s nothing for the band to put together close to 10-minute cuts like “Masters of the Highways”, or to summon from both the known and unknown sides of ‘the doors’ while “Dancing with Vampires” or speaking of the “Spirit of the Volcano”.

It even seems like the group touches on the beginning of the world, or about some being so supernally bad that it could have birthed it, on “Quetzalcoatl”. On these tracks and the others, the music is deliberate and pristine, the vocal style kicked with abandon by lead vocalist Dick Cory, and the lyrics an admixture of poesy and admonitions—were such a thing possible.

Granted, the most anticipatory moments of the piece are unequivocally on “Vampires”, a deliciously slow, highly tubed guitar-effect laden cut in which the groove of the verses, fleshed out by the drumming and the electric bass, are as good as music gets. Can you imagine “waltzing by moonlight, her lips stained with red” as Cory quips on the opening line? ‘Tis not to be taken lightly.

Plus, the collective is so well coordinated and versed in one another’s instrumentation that they can talk—to both one another and to listeners—well without any lyrics what-so-at-all. “The Slide” showcases this side of the group to perfection, opening up with a deep pocket in the drums, a tightly coupled interplay between the bass and the electric guitar, and a smooth progression before crowning it all with organ work that would do Ray Manzarek credit.

Just listening to it you get the feeling they’re speaking, telling you something rare and memorable, and all in the first minute and thirty seconds before the vocalist hits the mic. Such a sentiment applies to this album in general, which speaks volumes, as it were, about what the group has reaped on this outing.