Remember the chorus of “Hunger Strike” by Temple of the Dog, when Eddie Vedder’s low baritone and Chris Cornell’s wailing shriek met for the simple words, “I’m going hungry?” Well, the front men of some of rock’s most sorely-missed bands, Greg Dulli (Afghan Wigs, Twilight Singers) and Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees), have paired up as the Gutter Twins for Saturnalia, a record that is more or less based on that one blissful moment of grunge harmony. “My mother, she don’t know me / And my father, he can’t own me,” they sing together—one high, one low—on “All Misery/Flowers,” a track that, in its title, aptly characterizes the natural dualism of growl-and-gruff. For all of its darkness, there’s something beautiful about the way everything comes together on Saturnalia. Listening to the Gutter Twins is like appreciating the shininess of a pistol aimed at your face.

-Joseph Riippi