🌶️ To The Teeth: we'll see Spectral Voice at the end of the year

Plus: Hulder, Chapel of Disease, Chelsea Wolfe, My Dying Bride, Kerry King, Gouge Away & much more!

Feb 09, 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 🌶️!

I almost put Hulder’s ‘An Elegy’ from her new album next to the new Theophonos song ‘An Elegy’ in the playlist. I love it when the universe does things like that.

New Albums

🌶️ Spectral Voice

Death/doom, USA (Dark Descent Records)

FFO: Disembowelment, Incantation, Mortiferum

How cool is it to see a good band finding it’s true potential and turn into a great band. Spectral Voice was already really good (3/4 of this band is in Blood Incantation, 2/4 is in Black Curse), and with Sparagmos they’ve turned into fucking great. The second song in particular is 12 minutes absolutely fantastic, and while I’m used to that kind of longevity in atmospheric black metal, I didn’t know cavey death/doom could work that long so well. We’ll see eachother at the end of the year, Spectral boys.

🌶️ Hulder

Black, USA (20 Buck Spin)

FFO: Satyricon, Darkthrone, Ieschure

From the cobwebbed dungeons of Stygian Black Hand, Iron Bonehead and Livor Mortis, last year Hulder arrived in the middle of the highest of metal echelons. And deservedly so. Belgian born American Marliese Osborne excells in creative, dark and intense black metal with her very own sound. Not trendy per se (ehm, see the FFO’s above), but certainly not stale either.

🌶️ Chapel of Disease

Prog death/heavy, Germany (Ván Records)

FFO: Morbus Chron, Tribulation, Venenum

Chapel of Disease is named after not one but two Morbid Angel songs, but the death metal of Trey Azagtoth & co is falling further and further behind. Instead, these Colognians are sinking deeper and deeper into seventies prog rock and it’s not known if they can be saved. And that’s fine.

🌶️ Theophonos

Avantgarde black, USA (Profound Lore Records)

FFO: Serpent Column, Ὁπλίτης, Kostnatění

I was sad when Jimmy Hamzey wrapped up Serpent Column, but I also kinda felt he had said and done with it what he could. His new project Theophonos isn’t a direct continuation, but does something fresh with what he does best: chaotic, frenzied black metal with a touch of hardcore.

There’s more: Faal (🌶️ funeral doom from the Netherlands - sadly the last release from this band, because of the passing of guitarist Pascal), Chelsea Wolfe (mopey/doomy/folky from the USA), Aureole (atmoblack from the USA - Markov Soroka alert!), Fange (industrial sludge/death from France), Keys to the Astral Gates and Mystic Doors (raw black from the USA), Petrification (death from the USA), Morbid Saint (🌶️ thrash from the USA), Infected Rain (nu-metal/melodeath from Moldova). The rest is in the playlist!

New songs

There are new songs out from: My Dying Bride (🌶️ doom/death from the UK), Kerry King (thrash from the USA - you know who this is but it might still surprise you how much it sounds like you think it’ll sound), Necrot (🌶️ death from the USA), Locrian (experimental drone/doom from the USA), Týr (🌶️ prog/folk from Faroe Islands), Gouge Away (🌶️ hardcore from the USA), Borknagar (progressive folk/black from Norway), Isenordal (pagan black/neofolk from the USA), Givre (black from Canada) and Verwoed (🌶️ black from The Netherlands). The rest is in the playlist!

Bonus: there’s also a new song from Ulver (🌶️ dark electronic from Norway) and I totally love that band, but I’m increasingly uncertain if I should include them in this newsletter and playlist, for obvious reasons. Thoughts?

Non-metal & next week

Non-metal album of the week: Little Simz (hiphop/dance from the UK)

I’m looking forward to next week because of: Ihsahn & Darkspace.

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