🌶️ To The Teeth: the best of 2024

Sinstro, Grendel's Sÿster, Udåd, Ulver, Fórn, Ihsahn, Dool and the top 3!

Dec 24, 2024

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 🌶️!

The To The Teeth Top Ten

Yeah just ten this year. Not because there wasn’t enough to love.. Or was there? I don’t know about 2024 guys. The top stuff here is absolutely insane, but I had a fairly easy day keeping this to just ten. Of course I couldn’t help putting some of the music I listened to a lot in the honorable mentions. But still, I’m quote content with just ten and that’s a shift from previous years. It is what it is. I like all the T’s. I hope you’ll find something here that you might have missed and of course, even more I hope you’ll have fantastic holidays and a healthy, safe and carefree 2025. Cheers.

🌶️ 1. Opeth - The Last Will and Testament

Prog death/rock, Sweden (Reigning Phoenix Music)

FFO: Edge of Sanity, Katatonia, Wilderun

It was around two years ago that I started to wonder if Åkerfeldt would be writing and recording again. After all: 2005, 2008, 2022, 2014, 2016, 2019… It was about time. He had written In Cauda Venenum alone in a period of time where he had planned a long break, so I guess the covid crisis wouldn’t have to be a problem. But the years went by, until this august. I was in a tent with my family on a camping in the south of France, couldn’t sleep from the heat and saw the first new single ‘§1’ pop up on Spotify at midnight. I was shocked, happy as a little kid but also scared it would be shit. I listened to it with my phone against my ear as to not wake up my family. When the first growl came in, I almost teared up.
Anyway. Shouldn’t have to be scared. It ended up being a fantastic record. Maybe the best since Ghost Reveries (although I’m partial to Pale Communion). Not just because of the great death growls - by the best growler ever, I dare to say - but because it’s such an adventure, so dynamic, so compelling. It’s an album with everything that made Opeth great in the far and near past, heavy, progressive, folky and melancholic, plus it’s more theatrical than ever before, with beautiful details within to discover with every listen.

🌶️ 2. Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere

Death, USA (Century Media)

FFO: Morbid Angel, Pink Floyd, Drugs

I’ve had this one on top for a while, too. A band I expected something good from, after a great run of albums, but not this good. The way they dive deep into krautrock, progrock and other lava lamp music and still manage to keep the specific gravity of their death metal as heavy as it is, is incredible. All the praise they get is all deserved. A monolithic album.

🌶️ 3. Mdou Moctar - Funeral For Justice

Blues rock, Niger (Matador Records)

FFO: Tinariwen, Bombino, Jimi Hendrix

Mahamadou Souleymane, known as Mdou Moctar, is sometimes called the Jimi Hendrix of the Sahara. A fitting name, although the greatness of Mdou (pronounce as em-doo) Moctar lies in it’s fresh approach to the guitar. In the words of Kirk Hammett: “Us guitar players in the West, we all have the same base vocabulary, the same handful of stereotypical licks. But Mdou’s music, it’s almost free of that stuff. And because of that, it sounds more spontaneous. It sounds fresh. It’s amazing.” He’s (as always) right. The songs weren’t written as such, but improvised in long jams, and then cut to fit the album. Extra spontaneous, extra fun.

🌶️ 4. Dool - The Shape of Fluidity

Doom rock, The Netherlands (Prophecy Productions)

FFO: The Devil’s Blood, Wolvennest, Sólstafir

Another album I knew would end up on this list after just the first single. ‘Hermagorgon’ is an intense post/doom dirge with very personal subject matter, the born hermaphroditism of singer Raven van Dorst. I get goosebumps every time I listen to it, and it helps this is one of the very best (maybe the best) live bands of the low countries.

🌶️ 5. Ihsahn - Ihsahn

Experimental prog, Norway (Candlelight Records)

FFO: Emperor, Opeth, Leprous

A name so nice you can say it twice. He’s been a solo artist for far longer than the active recording years of Emperor, but I still see him as the ex-singer of that band. As to underscore the fact his genious hasn’t moved anywhere, he has named his eight album after himself. There are references to his past all over it, so it’s a sort of retrospective as well. I kinda lost him in the previous years, but while Ihsahn never went anyway, I’m back.

🌶️ 6. Fórn - Repercussions of the Self

Doom/sludge, USA (Persistent Vision Records)

FFO: Thou, Bell Witch, Lycus

Fórn’s flirt with doomy, sludgy post-metal pays off in a big way. Haunting and absorbing with a cinematic, grandiose quality.

🌶️ 7. Ulver - Liminal Animals

Experimental electronic, Norway (self released)

FFO: Depeche Mode, Arcturus, Dødheimsgard

You’ll forgive me the hesitation to include Ulver in the heavy sections of this newsletter when it came out. They haven’t been heavy in aeons, but: that’s not very important. Plus, as commenter JQ noted: “How many metalheads have been exposed to music they otherwise wouldn’t have listened to because it had the Ulver name on it?” Ulver will be Ulver. And they’re Ulvering here. Carry on.

🌶️ 8. Udåd - Udåd

Black, Norway (Peaceville Records)

FFO: Mork, Këkht Aräkh, Darkthrone

I love Thomas Eriksen’s main project Mork, but I haven’t loved it like Udåd. There’s something dreamy and distant here (hence the Këkht reference). It’s nostalgic and melancholic, with a base that’s undeniably true Norwegian black metal, but also has a bedroom dungeon synth vibe. I love that combination, especially if it’s driven by fantastic riff after fantastic riff.

🌶️ 9. Grendel's Sÿster - Katabasis into the Abaton

Heavy/folk, Germany (Cruz Del Sur Music)

FFO: Tanith, Bergfried, Slough Feg

Weird music, weird voice, weird lyrics, weird choice to do it in two languages. I’m completely entranced by these German nerds. I might be weird.

🌶️ 10. Sinistro - Vértice

Doom/post, Portugal (Alma Mater Records)

FFO: Moonspell, The Gathering, Messa

There’s something about Mediterranean music that sounds as if it’s been dried in the sun, soaked in the sea and dipped in olive oil. It can’t be coincidence that Sinistro is on Moonspell’s label, they share that sundried feeling, heavy with melancholy and topped off with fantastic vocals - even though current singer Priscila da Costa is not coming close to previous vocalist Patrícia Andrade. Da Costa brings her own unique ingredients.

I also listened to these a lot: Candy (metalcore, USA), Darkthrone (black/doom, Norway), Doedsmaghird (avantgarde black, Norway), Gouge Away (hardcore punk, USA), Het Universumpje (stoner, The Netherlands),Charlotte Wessels (symphonic/alternative, The Netherlands), Lowen (prog/post doom, UK), Givre (black, Canada), Solar Wimp (avantgarde/post/prog, USA), Isenordal (pagan/doom/neofolk, USA), Caligula’s Horse (prog, Australia), Spectral Voice (death/doom, USA), Inter Arma (sludge/black/death/post, USA), Thy Catafalque (avantgarde/prog, Hungary) and Bongripper (stoner/sludge, USA).

The Playlist

Check out the 101 best heavy songs of the year playlist right here!

Not-so-heavy & next year

Not-so-heavy albums of the year: Manu Chao, Billie Eilish, Hiatus Kaiyote, Froukje, Arooj Aftab, Angélica Garcia, The Smile (Wall of Eyes), Bolis Pupul, Eefje de Visser, Burial, Kelly Moran & Nilüfer Yanya.

I’m looking forward to next year because of: Ex Deo, The Halo Effect, Harakiri for the Sky, Jinjer, Unreqvited, Lacuna Coil, Mantar, Rotting Christ, Ghaals Wyrd, Mean Mistreater, Mastodon, Ghost, Wrekmeister Harmonies, Grima, Havukruunu, Cryptosis, Som, Spiritbox, Arch Enemy, Dream Theater, Obscura, Amorphis, Cradle of Filth, Imperial Triumphant, Mayhem, Paradise Lost, Samael, Soulfly and who knows, Triptykon.

What is your favourite? What did I miss? Let me know!