ALBUM REVIEW: Teeth To Sky – Guiltless
GUILTLESS follow up their well received debut EP Thorns with their debut full-length album Teeth To Sky on Neurot Recordings, which is produced by Kurt Ballou and results are as utterly devastating as you would expect. This is as affecting as music gets, it is sheer catharsis in sonic form and a thrill to listen to from start to finish.
Teeth To Sky is even more intensely crushing than its predecessor and a testament to the sheer power of the music of the band, but it is a bleak listening experience. There is an air of expectation there as well, as even when it seems to be devoid of anything even resembling some form of hope, there is a light that comes through the darkness, it is just that the darkness is very bleak indeed, like an all encompassing shadow that will take your breath away.
The fact that GUILTLESS feature members who have served time in the storied likes of A STORM OF LIGHT, INTRONAUT, GENERATION OF VIPERS and BATTLE OF MICE will tell you all you need to know about the wonderful noise that they make. Teeth To Sky is a pounding and profound experience in both aural excess and dreamlike passages, it is relentlessly heavy but also a thing of beauty as well.
Noise rock, experimental rock, industrial and sludge are all melded together and Teeth To Sky is an album that sounds like an almighty collision of the avant garde brutality and sheer sonic power of SWANS, the pummelling beauty of GODFLESH and NEUROSIS at their most intense. In fact this album sounds like it could be a companion album to the classic NEUROSIS album Through Silver In Blood as it shares that same relentless intensity and vision with GUILTLESS vocalist/guitarist/noise man Josh Graham‘s long standing connection with NEUROSIS, this makes perfect sense, as does the fact that it is released on the mighty Neurot Recordings.
Songs like One Is Two, In Starless Reign, Lone Blue Vale and Landscape Of Thorns are perfect examples of the weight and force of the music of GUILTLESS, this is titanium level heaviness and sound like the soundtrack to the end of the world, and you just need to surrender to its weight. There is also an air of introspection amongst the crushing heaviness as well especially on the closing track, the discordant beauty of Illumne, and its utterly devastating closing minutes and this makes for a perfect juxtaposition of those two elements, another definite case of beauty amongst the brutality, and adds another level to the power of Teeth To Sky.
Teeth To Sky is an album that stands proudly amongst the many amazing albums that Josh Graham, Sacha Dunable, Dan Hawkins and Billy Graves have made in previous bands before and that is testament to these masters of their craft and when they come together as GUILTLESS, the results are as sublime and powerful as demonstrates in full on Teeth To Sky.
Rating 8/10
Teeth To Sky is set for release on March 7th via Neurot Recordings.
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