🌶️ To The Teeth: Kvohst can't help himself and I'm not complaining
Plus: Fallujah, Aeon Winds, Draugveil, Skyborne Reveries, Between the Buried and Me, Hell, Modern Life is War and much more!
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 🌶️!
“I’m doing gardening and all that, trying to keep the lawn perfect, doing all the plants and whatnot. We got our hands full.”
New Albums
🌶️ Hexvessel
Post-black/doom, Finland (Prophecy Productions)
FFO: old Ulver, old Arcturus, Paysage d’Hiver
Mat McNerney tried to make doomy folk, but ended up in a black metal band anyway. His Hexvessel did make some beautiful folky music, before diving into the icey sounds on previous album Polar Veil, and now on Nocturne. I’m not complaining. McNerney - we probably should call him Kvohst again - is a metal lifer after all, who’s fingerprings are on acts like Code, Dødheimsgard and more and you can hear how naturally he moves around a blastbeat. Hexvessel is not doing anything new in this incarnation, but still sounds fresh and exciting.
There’s more: Fallujah (tech death, USA), Draugveil (🌶️ black, Czechia), Skyborne Reveries (atmoblack, Australia), Aeon Winds (symphonic black, Slovakia), ByoNoiseGenerator (brutal death/grind/jazz, Russia), Lycopolis (black, Egypt), Belenos (pagan black, France), Shrinkwrap Killers (🌶️ wave/space punk, USA - this is Greg from Autopsy/Brainoil/Deathgrave), Venus Star (black, Finland), Outergods (black/grind, UK) and Edicule (black, USA). The rest is in the playlist!
Eleven new songs
🌶️ Between The Buried And Me (progressive metalcore, USA)
🌶️ Hell (sludge/drone/doom, USA)
🌶️ Modern Life is War (hardcore punk, USA)
🌶️ Akvan (black, Iran)
🌶️ Faetooth (stoner/doom, USA)
🌶️ Helloween (power/speed, Germany)
🌶️ Blackbriar (symphonic, The Netherlands)
🌶️ Impureza (death/folk, France)
🌶️ Lord Belial (black, Sweden)
🌶️ Arjen Anthony Lucassen (prog, The Netherlands)
🌶️ Panopticon (black/acoustic, USA)
The rest is in the playlist!
Not-so-heavy & next week
Not-so-heavy album of the week: Theo Croker (jazz/hiphop, USA)
Next week: Cryptopsy, Hiroe & Imha Tarikat.
What is your favourite? What did I miss? Let me know!
I need to listen to more Byonoisegenerator, sax is instantly my jam.
Fallujah put out a real good one with Xenotaph.
BTBAM's my all-time favorite, I'm digging the new track.
Draugveil is an interesting case where people are accusing it to varying degrees of being AI? If it is an AI-generated project (which seems unlikely as one Bandcamp review indicates a track has origins before a lot of music genAI tools) I don't know if that says more about AI or black metal!
And from last week, Turnstile makes some real earworms, Never Enough has REALLY grown on me.