To loathe far beyond one’s own flesh to the point of vehement existential dread is a natural reaction to sentience as the bigger picture of human nature, confinement and forced unthinking norms fully sinks in. On their third full-length album Los Angeles, California-based death metal quartet TEETH aren’t just hating life but the very nature of existence as the doldrums set in and purpose circles the drain. Built on bursting grooves and hellish dissonant confrontation ‘The Will of Hate‘ intends to communicate the cursed and dragging spiral of the mind pushed past the point of despair into seething mayhem, a death metal album light on leads or soaring affect as its downtrodden, inward-stabbed bellowing pulls the listener down with it. The effect is bearish, insistent on the ruthless dread at hand to the point that the low-ringing intensity of its attack feels both consistent, convincing enough, and thrilling in its persistent resound.

Teeth formed circa 2013 between folks who’d run the gamut of underground interests and emerging trends between death-grind, atmospheric black metal, death-thrash, hardcore and such in the 2000’s and early 2010’s but they’d put this particular band together playing a sludge metal inspired form of death metal, eventually crossing the atmospheric edge of third gen post-metal with abstract/technical death metal influences. Their (initially) self-released debut full-length (‘Unremittance‘, 2014) was their only direct step along the outright sludge n’ grind path beyond a few splits in 2016 as they’d pivoted toward a more technical, sometimes grinding style on their second album (‘The Curse of Entropy‘, 2019) and it was a pretty good album, notable for its attack though most of their work bled together for my own taste upon brief review. The follow-up EP (‘Finite‘, 2021) remedied this with a focus on extremes, pushing for their atmospheric side and juxtaposing it with a more brutal uptick, it’d more-or-less been the main reason I spent some extra time with ‘The Will of Hate‘, curious to see how they’d develop depth beyond the simple effect of that EP.

Thunderous in render yet spongey in their kinetic bounding movements Teeth‘s approach to death metal amalgamates the Gorguts-level groove taken on by bands like Wake, a tinge of the rattling double-bass thrum and sludged-up chunk of ‘Gateways to Annihilation‘ while reverberating with the post-modern glint of advanced-level dissonant death metal as its key atmospheric huff. The natural result of said combination isn’t so drastically removed from Ulcerate‘s ‘Vermis‘ if their work on that album was less concerned with brutal death metal plunges and stuck with songs that lasted about half-length. In fact we rarely find any of the songs on ‘The Will of Hate‘, or, Teeth‘s discography in general stretching beyond the ~3-4 minute mark. While this allows for a minimum of repetition in some cases, and quite a lot of ground covered in others, these folks come across amped and interminably restless on each of their major recordings for the sake of cutting quick and easy to grasp pieces.

A colonnade through a mind on the brink. — Though the major goal of ‘The Will of Hate‘ is to roll it back and make it bigger, upping their focus while cutting back to concise as possible statement the major effect of this change is their work hitting like a tank. The thing to note here for longtime fans outright is that this one is still going to sound familiar but they’ve purposely infused the anxious, harried dread of past work rather than separate out the grinding, faster-paced stuff (see: “Pray”). At eleven songs and a ~40 minute runtime it also stretches ten minutes beyond the length their first two records, meaning they’re going to grind this one ‘ready pulverizing mood into your face for the duration this’ll be kinda drastic if you’re coming directly from the scatterbrained vault of ‘The Curse of Entropy‘. Most songs ring and slap within the same general register established early on and while this makes it hard to point to one highlight and not see similar things done in 2-3 other songs it makes for a consistent listen, a potent beam of bleak and brutal death metal groove with some impressive technical and atmospheric breaches along the way.

If you’d stepped directly from ‘Finite‘ into this album you wouldn’t need so much of a prompt, as soon as opener “Blight” pulls its Steve Tucker worthy roar n’ groove step-in (~15 seconds in) you’re going to feel the noveau avant-garde/dissonant death vibe (which I personally associate with ‘From Wisdom to Hate‘) alongside big, chunking riffs which recall the early 2000’s death metal plunge into ultra-downtuned territories. You won’t find such a distinct separation of the atmospheric and the brutal aspects of their sound but rather a full-powered flow through their ever-changing rush. I particularly enjoyed the kind of Suffo-level change up that hits around ~57 seconds in as this not only suggests they’ve got riffs but that these production values (engineered, mixed, mastered by vocalist/guitarist Erol Ulug) allow the band to breathe around their chugs, let ’em hang in the air for a while, as a lot of care has been put into giving this record a brutal set of balls -and- a vast sense of the space they’re wrecking.

There are in fact lead guitars on this record though nothing’d spiked my skull ’til “Prison” leading in with a modest but kinda Fredrik Thordendal inspired lick to start and later picking it back up and expanding the statement in the last third of the song. I particularly like this type of syncopated, repetitive piece in their hands which hits kinda like Nightmarer as it drives along but cuts off quick and finds a good focal point in the meandering lead used. So, there is some manner of variety in use here and Teeth are still a band prone to find a couple good ideas and create a death metal vignette of ’em rather than a full-on verse/chorus death metal song in the classic sense. It doesn’t always land upon substance for my own taste but as these eleven movements begin to carry their momentum through it does add up.

Cold, mechanical, brutal but not fully detached the middle section of the album gave me the most trouble in terms of holding my attention beyond the well-fleshed showing of “Shiver” which does well to take all of the pieces of what makes this album interesting (dissonant severity, modern post-atmosphere, pure death metal volatility, etc.) and builds a substantial piece from them. There is an almost “industrial” stiffness, an unreal precision and a ranting state to some of these songs which doesn’t particularly interest me but speaks to the tenets of tech-death for a different generation (again, a peak Meshuggah-fed phenom) which doesn’t have the “real” feeling of death metal in-person which I’m typically after and though this doesn’t hurt “Apparition”, another well crafted and fully-fleshed piece, the sensation of where’s the damn riff? still struck me to some degree. Some notes on my own taste I suppose, and not fully relevant to the general audience’s likely reaction.

My favorite songs on the album are abrupt as often as they are lingering in the atmosphere Teeth‘d create, such as “Seethe” a wracking piece on the last third of the album where I believe most listeners will feel the progeny of Gorguts feeding the fire most on this album. Allowing some space for the bass guitar to stab through with a mean groove helps this song to stand out and setting it next to the throttled pump of another highlight “Churn” meant I was fully “in” on this album by the time the second half was up and running. In this mode and further down their path the sense to call back to the energy of the opener just enough gives the sensation that we’re still in the same place, boiling within the harsh realities of absurdism, but we’ve gone places as the album presents some natural grouping of pieces into a general progression of style and mood conveyed. Overall I’d found the full listen was belabored by one or two songs, needed a bit more variety/voice in its lead guitar technique, but they’ve done well to stop and focus on creating an album with a particular feeling rather than just a collection of songs.

In terms of conveying monstrous, wrathful and chasmic-shot mood as everything drains into a void… the horrifying death-spiral of Eldritch eyes, teeth and tendrils that graces album cover art from Paul Carrick matches the spirit of the album per its ruthlessly dark vision, curious perspective wrought with both repetitive and uniquely set details. ‘The Will of Hate‘ makes an incredible first impression with this image and it is well curated, pairing ideally with the music itself. I’d make similar remarks about Ulug‘s job with the production values, clearly a pro-set deal with a high modern standard (too polished and separated from reality for my own taste as it might be) the result makes sense for the band and their trajectory with the full discography in mind.

Though Teeth‘s approach hasn’t always been for me, and I’d appreciated the extremes of ‘Finite‘ prior wanting more along those lines, I couldn’t deny the overall effect of repeated and focused listens to this album which were monstrously stated, inhuman in their reach for heft, and miserable in affect as they delivered a well-detailed sensation in the moment with a lingering, kinda surreal aftertaste. Though the results weren’t earth-shattering per my own taste I do think this band does particularly fine work when they’re this focused on the task at hand wherein the overall quality and vision of this album prompted numerous repeat listens. Won’t last forever on my shelf but it’d definitely got me to sit back, immerse and pay attention. A moderately high recommendation.

---