Archive for the ‘Frontpage Feature’ Category

2015. Another, goddamn, year over already. And how’d it end? With a major downer with Lemmy going somewhere else. Who do we have left? Ozzy? Rob? Alice? Anyone else? Damn. It wasn’t all that bad of a year though, even if the world seemed to become even crazier than 2014 — if Fox News is to be believed. Plenty of good music got released and what we’ve got here is a top list of metal related stuff that Teeth of the Divine’s staff handpicked themselves. Unlike most of our corporate overlords, we don’t outsource our opinions, enslave some poor bastards and build safety nets around them just in case they decide to call it quits. Actually, that’s not true. We’re not a hive mind, we enslave people to write for us but we sure as hell aren’t spending any of our huge advertising revenue to keep them alive. Ha! Anyway, browse around and find some worthy stuff you might have missed!

The thing that seemed most impossible, has happened, and with great sadness we bow our heads at the news that Lemmy’s life long tour has finally come to a close. Just two days after his birthday on December 26th, Lemmy was diagnosed with cancer and two days from there, the man, the myth and the living legend had passed away. Another metal and rock’n’roll icon, taken, but whose music and uncompromising attitude will forever live on.

We here at Teeth give our condolences and utmost respect to the family and friends of Lemmy and our gratitude for his direct and impactful involvement in shaping the music that has gotten many of us through the challenges that life has thrown at us.

Raise a toast, drink some more, blast a few tunes and celebrate all the good times. Even in death, the man will not die.

Thank you, Lemmy.

Born to lose, live to win.

Teeth of the Divine will wind down a bit for the remainder of 2015. Some of us, and you, will perhaps celebrate some of the various holidays. Some will find peace through detox. But whatever your chosen action is, we wish you happy hunting and nod our thanks to you for following us throughout the year — this and the past ones. We’ll be back with more reviews, perhaps some interviews and our yearly best of -list in no time. So merry whatever, have a good one and catch you closer to 2016.

In this ‘journalism’ gig you run across hundred of people and bands. I’ve done countless interviews, got countless emails and Facebook messages and so forth, but you rarely make a connection. Something more than just the grinding wheels of music and reviewing/interviewing. However, sometimes you do make a deeper connection and dare I say, friendship. I like to think I made one such connection with Nathan Gearhart, the vocalist for the re-activated Arizona Death metal band, Vehemence.

While summer 2015 didn’t met all the expectations, there was at least one constant in that equation; Wanaja Festival held in Hämeenlinna, Finland. Again, its inclusion on a heavy metal site is questionable at best and totally schizophrenic at worst, as most of the artists on the bill aren’t necessarily singing about Satan or promoting safe sex with dead people. But as always, there’s at least a band or two that gives us an excuse to attend the festival and live to tell about it on a heavy metal website. So gather around for some egotistically driven babble about the experience from few months back — when the weather was actually still nice.

More likely than not, you have already decided if you will like or purchase Deafheaven’s new album, regardless of this review. Am I right? I mean, you either loathed or loved 2013’s watershed album, Sunbather (full disclosure – it was my top pick for the year), or you simply don’t care for the band’s style, the ‘hipster’ […]

It is without a doubt in my mind that Pakistan’s crust/grind champions Multinational Corporations are the best new grind band of the last decade.  I’d stake my reputation, house and hell my balls on it!  Taking their name from a blistering cut off of Napalm Death’s Scum classic, the duo of Hassan (vocals/words) and Sheraz (all instruments) do it in the same old school fashion as the legends from which they culled their namesake.

The Beginning of Times and Circle were both solid Amorphis albums, each with a few memorable standout tracks, yet I haven’t returned to them often. Instead, when I’ve been in the mood for some of the Finns’ melancholic majesty, I’ve chosen Skyforger, which I think is the quintessential album for the band’s now-lengthy third era (by my classification, anyway; era 1 […]

“SLAYERRRRRRRR!!!!” “PLAY SOME FUCKIN’ SLAYERRRRRRRRR!!!!!!” You hear it at every show you go to, it seems. There’s always that one or maybe two douchebags that scream at the band on stage to play some “fuckin’ Slayer, man”. I feel it’s more than likely one of the prime reasons why Slayer gets a mostly bad rep […]

Contra ain’t nothing to fool around with, you hear me?  This is the very definition of a POWER trio.  There’s no soft stuff or any singer getting in the way, just three men bashing their way through riff after riff of runaway heavy groove with a rhythm section tighter than a noose primed for a good sunrise hangin’.  These fellas aren’t strangers to the heavy.  Chris honed his guitar chops in the much missed Sofa King Killer, Aaron’s pummeling battery was an integral part of Fistula and several other infamous Ohio sludgers and Adam’s background is a bit of a mystery to me (though I’ll find out!)

Wisconsin’s Jungle Rot have been toiling in the US death metal scene for over 20 years now. But the last few years, since the band signed to Victory Records in 2011, has seen a second coming of the long running act. The three albums for the label (2011’s Kill on Command, 2013’s Terror Regime and this year’s Order Shall Prevail), sees the band at the very top of their game, aging like a fine wine.

Back in 1998 Nile, a death metal band from South Carolina, released Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka on Relapse Records. One could argue, and i would be one of them that the release reinvigorated American metal (as well as Relapse), a death metal scene that was saturated in Nu metal, Pavement Records, JL America and Crash Music bands that were simply soulless speedy death metal clones. However, Catacombs, changed the game.

Midmourner is sick…  Like canker sores with a side of toe-fungus and blown bile ducts sick.  Their thick, surly sludge dementia is as pure as the artform gets; miring itself in wails of corrosive feedback, clinically flatlined riffage, morphine drip blues grooves, inhuman vocal spawn, a rhythm section that smells of extinction and enough anger to put the band members’ in an institution for life.  With lunatics that have served time in seminal Alabama destruction squads Molehill and Residue, Midmourner have dropped a six song doozy with their debut EP, Adorned in Fear and Error.  It’s been great catching up with vocalist Shane George lately, since our last conversation via email many, many moons ago.  Crack a beer, raid the medicine cabinet and let’s have a little Q & A intoxication! 

There was a time in the late 90s and early 00s where England’s Cradle of Filth were one of my very favorite bands, and whether you liked it or not, they were legitimate superstars in extreme metal. I enjoyed 2000s Midian, 2003’s Damnation and A Day, and really liked 2004’s Nymphetamine, but I never really loved […]

It’s getting harder to be heavy AND original these days.  In the world of riffing it seems a template was created and thusly many are following along instead of attempting to pioneer something different.  I think I can say with certain sanctity that Palace in Thunderland are doing something different and succeeding.  These guys have been around for a long time (over a decade) and are a home to members of esteemed bands Black Pyramid, Blue Aside and Space Mushroom Fuzz.  They took a five year break, returning from the void with an exciting vision collecting together the best of 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s heavy rock.  There’s no aping, lifting, copycatting, etc.  The foursome simply calls upon their idols for inspiration, taking the asteroid handed down by the elders and crashing it into Earth.   I sit down at the edge of the universe for an interview meet n’ greet with these entheogenic lifeforms.

While Sweden is the birthplace and home of buzzing, midrange death metal, other countries have dipped into the sound and come up with impressive takes on the sound. The Czech Republic (Brutally Deceased), Poland (Ulcer, Hereza), Greece (Wreckage), France (Skelethal) and even the US (Fatalist, Unwilling Flesh). Well Finland has their own impressive addition in Mörbid Vomit, an eclectic collective of current and former dudes from Black Sun Aeon, Devilhorn, Kivimetsan Druidi and The Zombi.

Dog days of Summer are approaching. That means heat and sweaty gussets. The only remedy and answer for mother nature’s bukkakke of humidity is some brutal (and we mean brutal) death metal. It just so happens that brutal death metal is the specialty of Comatose Music! Thus, we’ll make the upcoming heatwave even more brutally intolerable by partnering up with Comatose and Clawhammer PR to throw four (4) of the label’s recent gut wrenching slabs of metal at you.

2015 brings the return of England’s Paradise Lost for their 27th year in existence. It also brings fourth their 14th full length album. In this day and age, it is amazing to have a band with this kind of longevity and productivity. Add to that the fact that the lineup is original except for the drummer, […]

Gruesome released one of the best death metal albums of this year in ‘Savage Lands’. Not only that, but the album is an excellent love letter to the older Death -albums, old school death metal and most of all, to Chuck Schuldiner. We chatted briefly with one of the main motors of Gruesome, drummer Gus Rios, about how the band came to be and how ‘Savage Lands’ turned out how it did. So sit down, pour yourself some Chianti, eat a corpse and let death consume you.

The reigning kings of technical, historically-themed brutality, NILE, are currently in the studio wrapping up the mix of their upcoming album What Should Not Be Unearthed. Produced by NILE and mixed by Neil Kernon. The album will be released late summer via Nuclear Blast Records. Mastermind Karl Sanders states: “All of us in NILE are […]

The fine Canucks up in Canada’s Blast Head Records are in a giving mood as summer is right around the corner… probably because they never see the sun, right? Anyways to celebrate the upcoming warmth, the label is giving away 10 CDs, yep, ten CDs. And here is the great thing: YOU (or whomever wins) gets to HAND PICK the CDs from Blast Head Records’ releases!!! No questions, no judgement, no getting CDs you might not be interested in. Just 5 CDs each to two randomly picked lucky winners.

I owe Shroud of Despondency’s Rory Heikkila an apology. Not only was I extremely tardy in my reviews of the band’s albums—Pine and Tied to an Dying Animal—this interview was supposed to occur months ago. Quite frankly the band slipped through the cracks of my massive backlog of metal to review, emails to answer and interview requests. I guess my situation sort of mirrors the band’s trials and tribulations as they have slipped through the cracks of even metal’s most independent labels during the band’s 15 years of existence (and 18 or so releases)…

For a decade now, Slovenia’s Dekadent have toiled in the underground with little fanfare or recognition, only exalted by those few in the know about this superb band. Maybe it’s the band’s geographical location. Or the band’s chosen style of un-traditional black metal that focuses on cinematic atmospheric and uplifting harmonies. But for whatever reason the band never seemed to get the recognition it deserved with their three prior albums, notably 2011s sumptuous Venera : Trial & Tribulation, my first exposure to the band.

A few years ago North Carolina’s Daylight Dies were the darling of the US death doom scene, picking up the mantle of the likes of Morgion and invoking the Finnish greats like Rapture and such. But 4 only albums in 10 years saw the band sort of fall from the genre’s pinnacle. But you know a band has left a positive legacy when a band starts to mimic you and your sound to a tee. And that’s what fellow North Carolinians Atten Ash have done.

So here is the first of our new classics feature that is likely to ruffle a few feathers, just as the album’s initial release did back in 2002. The second album from Arizona’s Vehemence, God Was Created. Released in a bit of a dead era for death metal, the album was released on Metal Blade and was one of Metal Blade’s real gambles, being a new, young death metal band amid the label’s roster that included Vader, Amon Amarth, Vomitory, Bolt Thrower and such, and in a time where US death metal was in a bit of a lull. The band had a self-released album, The Thoughts From Which I Hide under their belt, and followed up God Was Created with 2004’s Helping the World to See, but it was the infamous middle album that divided metal fans and critics.