🌶️ To The Teeth: Behemoth, stvpid fvn or dvmb dvmb?

Plus: Jade, Bleed, Rye, Hell, Abyssal Vacuum, Hate, Pyramids, Candlemass, Turnstile, Hell & much more!

May 09, 2025

Welcome to the To The Teeth newsletter! Your weekly update of new heavy music. You can listen to (most) everything in the playlist on Spotify. If you like what you read, go to Patreon (receive a patch!) & Bandcamp (buy a patch!). Peppers are hot 🌶️!

“We have some dry stuff to put on the fire, if you know what I mean.”

New Albums

🌶️ Behemoth

Black/death, Poland (Nuclear Blast)

FFO: Hate, Belphegor, Vader

Behemoth has always been on a very delicate balance of an intense and profound anti-religious horde from a country where they actually have ideological terrain to win - and a pretty dumb band. On this new album the title alone gives a pretty good idea of which way they’re falling this time.
Sigh.
So, ok, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. The title track is dumb. Not good dumb, dumb dumb. It’s very Ilud Divinus Insanus and well, that’s not good. But overall, this record has a super heavy, thick production I really like. Dense and crunchy guitars, drumming that seems to be fucking everywhere, and Nergal’s insane barks that still hit like a garden tile to the face. And a lot of the songs here really do, too. The two opening songs: stupid fun. ‘To Drown the Svn in Wine’, ‘Nomem Barbarvm’, ‘O Venvs, Come!’: all good. The closer: really fucking good. The title track: really dragging everything to the dumpster.
So where does this Behemoth fall? Dumb dumb or stupid fun? Time will tell.

🌶️ Jade

Atmospheric death, Spain/Germany (Pulverised Records)

FFO: Sweven, Sulphur Aeon, Ruins of Beverast

I’ve been following Foscor for a good few years - great band, great people. So I was happy to hear two of their members had an atmospheric death metal project and happier even to hear it’s great as well! On their second album, the black and doom elements stayed, but there’s more depth, more ideas (especially vocally) and so much to discover.

🌶️ Rye/Рожь

Atmoblack/funeral doom, Russia (Reflection Nebula)

FFO: Olhava, Déhà, Drudkh

Vladimir Frith knows his way around a good riff. Rye (Рожь) has made some great atmospheric black in the past, but it works just as well at speed setting ‘funeral doom’.

There’s more: Skaphos (black/death, France), a demo from The Sun’s Journey Through the Night (🌶️ black/ambient, UK), an ep from Candlemass (epic doom, Sweden), Prophetic Suffering (black/death, Canada), Crematory (industrial/gothic, Germany), Mütterlein (black/industrial, France), Froglord (doom/sludge, UK), Trichomoniasis (brutal death, USA), and an acoustic album from Nechochwen (folk/black/neofolk, USA).

Highlights from last week:

🌶️ Bleed

Alternative, USA (20 Buck Spin)

FFO: I could name some other modern acts with grungy nu-metally sounds, but it’s really just Deftones, Alice in Chains and Incubus you’re looking for here

Are you old? Did you grow up in the late nineties and did you never really let go of simple riffs and riveting vocals? I am. And Bleed fills a gap in my heart. It’s a beautiful blend of Alice in Chains, Deftones and Incubus, and maybe a pinch of shoegaze. It’s one part great riffs and two parts atmosphere, and I absolutely love it. Maybe enough time has passed between then and now for this not to feel like a knockoff or tribute, maybe it’s my age. I just love that there’s a band that doesn’t fit into metal, alternative, grunge, punkrock or hardcore and hits people on all those islands.

🌶️ Hate

Blackened death, Poland (Metal Blade)

FFO: good Behemoth, Vader, Belphegor

There’s a place where people can go to when they’re disappointed with new Behemoth, and that place is called Hate. Not revolutionary, not going to end up on a lot of prominent yearlists, but solid, steady and the perfect comfort food.

🌶️ Abyssal Vacuum

Black, France (Signal Rex)

FFO: Blut Aus Nord, Rhinocervs, Haunter

I’ve been following this mysterious act since their first ep in 2018, released by the lamented Solar Asceticists Productions. I bought MMXVII on cassette, and it came in a white velvet pouch with small stone-like pieces of incense, that are supposed to relieve anxiety. Well, the music doesn’t help. No longer a solo project but a full band, and signed by Signal Rex, they’re back with a first proper full length full of dense black metal with hidden melodies to lure you into the depths.

🌶️ Pyramids

Experimental black/shoegaze & reggaeton, USA (The Flenser)

FFO: Bosse-de-Nage, Divide & Dissolve, Astronoid

This is a weird one. Very weird. Pyramids’ last album, A Northern Meadow, is still in heavy rotation here. Such a mysterious, weird take on both black metal and post-rock. On their newest - ten years after the previous release - they blend black metal with... reggaeton. Now, I know I am one of the few listeners in both those demographics, so this should be right up my alley. And it is. But I don’t know.. Is it that I like both styles too much to hear them fused together? Is it that singer Emy Smith is rubbing up against (but not reaching the same heights) the voice of Rosalía? Is it just too weird for me, or too clever? Am I the problem? This band and the idea for this record are too good to just dismiss, so I’ll give it a few more spins.

The rest is in the playlist!