This is music that has been raised out in the cold and hardened in the bitter wind; lean, sinewy and mean. It's heavy but cut close to the skin; elegant and graceful but never quite too pretty. It's music that gets dark early.

After a decade of working together in various projects and temporary situations, childhood friends Dave Valle (drums) and Brian Grosz (vocals/guitar) came together during the faint nights of a December in Brooklyn and began to meticulously workshop their matieral. Grosz was recovering from a broken hand; a heavily-medicated month-long stretch in a plaster cast during which he mapped out an album's worth of material using only five fingers and a piano. The songs quickly evolved from sparse, sketchlike compositions into the realm of towering guitars, thunderous drums and gravel-ragged vocals.

It's primal, it's loud and it's libidinous.