🌶️ To The Teeth: let's cry with the beautiful sadness of Mournful Congregation
🌶️ To The Teeth: let's cry with the beautiful sadness of Mournful Congregation
Plus: Immortal, Kostnatění, Mesarthim, Ruïm, Horrendous, Mizmor, Yakuza, Blackbraid, Hexvessel 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 🌶️!
New Albums
🌶️ Mournful Congregation (funeral doom from Australia. FFO: Skepticism, Evoken, Bell Witch, crying)
Man, this band. Beautiful melodies, heartwrenching sadness, profound leads - it’s so so good. I loved the first ep of the two, and the new one is another piece of greatness, even if it’s just two new songs and an old but stunning re-recorded demo. Plodding, plowing, fighting against desparation or embracing it. Get ready to cry.
🌶️ Immortal (black from Norway. FFO: Abbath, Horgh)
Speaking of crying. I’ve seen Immortal only once, 23 years ago (ugh, my knees) and Abbath was fire breathing in the blazing sun. It was at least 35 degrees, and he was yelling at the sun: “Fuck the sun!” Incredibly funny. But also: good. Anyway, nowadays only Demonaz is left in the band. It’s still catchy, riffy, ice cold black metal that’s immediately recognizable as Immortal. But… to be honest, not as good as its predecessor.
🌶️ Kostnatění (black/folk from the USA. FFO: Deathspell Omega, Odz Manouk, Serpent Column)
The ep Oheň hoří tam, kde padl was one of my favourite releases of last year. The idea - turning traditional Turkish melodies into black metal - seemed impossible, but it was incredibly well done. New album Úpal is a little easier to digest. Or is it? Haha no. This is the description that comes with it:
“Úpal ("heatstroke") is a story of the human condition as a function of heat. The rise of consciousness in warm-blooded creatures has given rise to impossibly dense, illogical webs of thought that can completely divorce our lived experience from the physical world around us.”
So, yeah. Bonkers.
🌶️ Mesarthim (atmoblack/trance from Australia. FFO: Midnight Odyssey, Violet Cold, Sadness)
Black metal to doze off on. Synthy, spacey, floaty, sliky. But: if you actually fall asleep, you’ll miss that there’s a lot more to this than just ambiance.
🌶️ Ruïm (black from Norway. FFO: Mayhem, Funeral Mist, Vltimas)
Hide your local church. This is Blasphemer’s (Mayhem, Vltimas, Aura Noir) new band and it’s a blast. It’s built upon late nineties unused Mayhem-riffs he dug up, and while Ruïm sounds modern, you do hear what made Blasphemer-era Mayhem so good. Wrap that all up in Brazilian occultism and you get this new project. Lovely.
There’s more: Yakuza (🌶️ avantgarde/prog from the USA), Metal Church (heavy/thrash from the USA), Cloak (gothic/black from the USA), Vomitory (death from Sweden), Kalmah (melodeath from Finland), Suffering Quota (grind from The Netherlands), Usnea (blackened funeral doom from the USA), Shy, Low (instrumental post from the USA), Olkoth (black/death from the USA), Vexing (death/doom/sludge from the USA), Sarvekas (black from Finland), Incendiary (metalcore from the USA), a collaboration from Dødsferd & Sarvok (black/ambient/experimental from Greece), Nattverd (black from Norway), Phlebotomized (prog death/doom from The Netherlands), Dratna (black from Ireland) and Teitan (avantgarde black from The Netherlands). The rest is in the playlist!
Hot singles in your area
Horrendous are easily one of my favourite death metal bands - or bands in general. So happy they’re back, can’t wait for the new album (which I’ve heard, and it’s fantastic!).
There are new songs out from: Horrendous (🌶️ prog death from the USA), Hexvessel (folk from Finland - feat. Okoi from Bölzer), Mizmor (black/drone/doom from the USA), Blackbraid (atmoblack from the USA), Miserere Luminis (🌶️ black from Canada - members of Gris and Sombres Forêts), Ageless Summoning (death from the UK - w/ member of Abyssal), Boris & Uniform (things from Japan and hardcore from the USA), Sirenia (symphonic from Norway - w/ ex-Tristania member), Xasthur (black from the USA), End Reign (metalcore from the USA - members of Integrity, Pig Destroyer, Exhumed, All Out War), Tsjuder (black from Norway) and Divide and Dissolve (drone/doom from Australia). The rest is in the playlist!
Non-heavy & next week
Non-heavy album of the week: Peter Fox (hiphop/pop from Germany)
I’m looking forward to next week because of: Thantifaxath, Pupil Slicer, Corpsessed & Einar Solberg.
What was your favourite? What did I miss? Let me know!
Great stuff as always! Really excited for that Yakuza album and Mournful Congregation. Shy, Low looks interesting too.
I'm also checking out Victory Over the Sun's new album, Dance You Monster to My Soft Song!, I really liked their 2021 project and hope that this one capitalizes on the good stuff from that one.