Twisted Tower Dire
The Curse of Twisted Tower

July 2000
Released: 1999, Miskatonic Foundation
Rating: 2.5/5
Reviewer: Joe

This promo cassette was recently passed along to me by EvilG, and after scanning over the band’s accompanying bio I thought they might be semi decent. If they’ve appeared at festivals like Powermad ’99, March Metal Meltdown 2000, and Phantasmagoria Metalfest, have opened for Iced Earth, and are scheduled to appear at this year’s Milwaukee Metalfest AND Wacken 2000 (with a 3 week European tour to follow), then they must be pretty good, right??? Sadly, this is not the case.



I’ve listened to The Curse of Twisted Tower several times over the past couple of weeks in my car and I just can’t get into it. From a technical standpoint, the band aren’t all that bad, but the music just doesn’t grab my attention. The band has a few interesting ideas, but unfortunately they get mixed with too many lame ones which in turn, causes the songs to be unnecessarily "dragged out." The poor production quality doesn’t help matters, either. It’s too muddy sounding and hampers any amount of enjoyment that might be derived from the recording. Overall, it just sounds dated.



Basically, Twisted Tower Dire sound like a NWOBHM band that got lost in the shuffle nearly twenty years ago. That’s not really a bad thing... But you’d have to be a die-hard fan of this stuff to appreciate it fully. Recommended for fans of bands like Skullview only.



If interested, check them out at http://www.ttd.cjb.net