Teeth bite again.
Three years after their last EP, the American band made up of Erol Ulug (guitar/vocals, ex-Mortal Wound, ex-Wageslave), Justin Moore (guitar/vocals, ex-Our Place of Worship Is Silence, ex-Wageslave), Peter King (bass, Lake of Blood, Mortal Wound) and Alejandro Aranda (drums, Karas) release The Will of Hate, their third album, on Translation Loss Records.
Blight immediately assails us with an approach as complex as it is crushing, coupled with powerful vocal parts, but there are also a few more jerky patterns that weigh down the rhythm, just as on Loathe where the Sludge/Doom roots resurface. Dissonance remains in carefully crafted keys before Prison takes its place, placing more heady leads between the furious accelerations, like the long, misty solo on the finale that leads us to Pray, a track that starts relatively calmly, but accelerates to carry us away in its whirlwind of rage. The infernal riffs return to oppression on Shiver, where devastating drums meet dark and suffocating slowness, then it’s with disturbing leads that the band unveils Apparition, a kind of impressive raw block of sound where guitars and drums keep a permanently heavy climate. We then move on to Writhe, which finds technical passages while remaining at a relatively moderate pace, before Seethe borrows from Grind/Death to create wilder eruptions. The drums retain their unpredictability on Churn, while the guitars indulge in steamy flights of fancy, but the ferocity returns on Realm, while ranting complements the ominous harmonics, but it’s with a catchy break that the band continues to Devour, the longest of the compositions, which starts off gently enough, but is sure to ignite with a common pulse, only to slow down again to close the album with an intriguing melody.
Complexity has become as important as dissonance and oppression in Teeth‘s compositions. Whether at full speed or more slowly, The Will of Hate knows exactly what to do to keep us on the edge of our seats.
80/100