Band:	Teeth
Album:	The Will Of Hate
Style:	Technical death metal
Release date:	August 30, 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. Blight
02. Loathe
03. Prison
04. Pray
05. Shiver
06. Apparition
07. Writhe
08. Seethe
09. Churn
10. Realm
11. Devour

When Teeth broke into the scene, they were a pretty intriguing combination of dissonant death metal and death doom metal. Nowadays they focus more on the former, but they remain intriguing.

It's already been an entire decade since Unremittance broke unto the scene, but it was 2019's The Curse Of Entropy that was my first contact with Teeth, and it was that specific blend of approaches that make them stand out, alongside just how good they were at creating this oppressive kind of atmosphere. Thankfully, the band keeps the same lineup that they had on The Curse Of Entropy, but even between that album and the debut there have been some slight shifts in style that are only further embraced with The Will Of Hate. It's not as much a fundamental change as much as a tipping of the scales. In 2014, I could, in earnest, call Teeth a death doom band. I can't do that anymore.

Which isn't to say that death doom has no presence on The Will Of Hate. But, for the most part, this is a technical dissonant death metal album, and for someone who has their first contact with Teeth through it, it is pretty much indistinguishable at the first impression from the myriad of other bands in the genre, even though some defining characteristics still remain. Like, for example, how even if the sound is dissonant (as the genre's name implies), and it does feel close to a nauseating whirlwind of riffs, it's actually far from being the most nauseating and suffocating and dense of its kind, opting for a more grounded approach, more punchy and subtly technical than anything avant-garde and overbearing.

And then, of course, there's the fact that some of it does retain something from outside death metal. Whether the doomy aspect in some of its slower and more ominous moments is more akin to death doom or to sludge metal is up for debate, but there are also moments that go outside even that. Very briefly there are moments where the intensity can border grindcore, and quite a couple of riffs are chuggier than one would expect from a disso-death album, taking a couple of tasteful cues from metalcore. But these are all just nuances that I might be reading too far into. For the most part The Will Of Hate is doing one thing: oppressive riffing over monotone growls. It pretty much boils down to whether that's the listener's thing or not.

The Will Of Hate is, in a way, a more accessible album of its kind, but it's not really the kind of streamlining that makes them lose any of the appeal of being bludgeoned by riffs, but not all riff bludgeonings have to be nauseating and suffocating. Sometimes you just want to have some OSDM-leaning riffs, some doom, some chugs, some melody. Teeth deliver that.