MARK THOMAS DEMING: LOZEN'S CD RELEASE PARTY TONIGHT >>>

The cover art for Tacoma metal duo Lozen’s new 10-inch record, Oona, is a picture of epiphany â€" a Southwest desert sunset by Seattle painter “Bird.” Majestic sandstone formations dot the distance. Dark clouds brood. A giant brain floats in the sky launching thunderbolts down at the earth.

Any American wanderer worth his Kerouac can attest to some strange, near-religious desert experience. My own involved a peanut butter sandwich, a Richard Brautigan book and between 15 and 30 apparitions beating drums on a cliff high above me.

But I digress.

The word, perhaps, is enlightenment â€" a new understanding via place and space and (There’s a record inside, remember?) music. This, you see, is Lozen.

I met drummer Justine Valdez and guitarist/bassist Hozoji Matheson-Margullis at the Tempest for a drink last Friday. It looked as though the interview would fade meekly into inconsequence, and then something happened. Well, a couple of more rounds happened. I stopped interviewing and they stopped being interviewed. We started just talking, and the real, rambling Lozen was revealed.

When I say rambling, I mean these ladies love the road. Touring informs them personally and musically. And in a way, they’re named for the road: Lozen, an Apache woman-warrior and prophet, constantly traversed the desert helping her people survive the terrors of colonization.

“We both have wanderlust,” says Matheson-Margullis. “We love to experience other places and cultures, and it’s awesome to use music as a vehicle for that.”

A better word than vehicle is vessel: it both carries and contains. The six songs on Oona, released on local label Rural Wolf, are dark, rumbling, fierce and weirdly beautiful, much like the clouds on the cover. Oona was an Ojibwa woman who preserved her heritage through story, and the record seems a similar preservation â€" the preservation of Lozen’s own unique narrative. It’s a great one, by the way, but I’ve neither the space nor the authority to tell it. You’ll have to hear it and feel it for yourself.

[The New Frontier Lounge, CD release party tonight with Canon Canyon and Typewriters, Friday, April 24, 9 p.m., $5, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, 253.572.4020]

LINK: Lozen on MySpace