Following Deadbird’s celebrated debut album Head and the Heart, the doom-metal quartet’s guitarist and bass player left the band — leaving founding brothers, Chuck and Phil Schaaf, on their own. So it took three years to follow up with 2008’s Twilight Ritual. But after the opening earth-shaker “Into the Clearing” worms its way into your head and rattles your brain against your eardrums, it’s evident the wait was worth it. “Death of the Self” further breaks from the genre’s confines with twin guitarmonies that have more in common with Iron Maiden or Thin Lizzy than Black Sabbath or Sleep. A salient solo emerges from the stormy distortion of “Rule Discordia,” though it’s Chuck Schaaf’s impassioned singing that takes center stage here as it similarly stands out from the bedlam of larynx-thrashing screams that dominate most of the song. The title-track closes with the slowed eruption of an active volcano.