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HYPERDONTIA
Nexus Of Teeth

Dark Descent (2018)
Rating: 9/10

Some great cover art conceals what is a fine death metal release courtesy of a Turkish / Danish combo that are sure to not just turn heads, but decapitate them.

Nexus Of Teeth is a harmful experience; a debut album from a band that features members of Undergang, Phrenelith, Decaying Purity and others. Expect then a grotesque, sepulchral stench to emanate from this fusty, fleshy heap that chugs and grinds like some heaving mass of cysts, tumours and other assorted lesions. Eight tracks, 34-minutes, and yet you’ll feel as if you’ve been dragged into the very jaws of that hideous creation that yawns on the cover.

This year I’ve been impressed with a number of death metal albums from the likes of Tomb Mold (Manor Of Infinite Forms), Ataraxy (Where All Hope Fades) and Mortuous (Through Wilderness), and this one sits nicely alongside those releases because from the off it’s a weighty, and all-consuming platter bloated with thrashing drums and operated by dense, fusty riffs that literally bleed gloop with every strum.

Vocally, David Mikkelsen has an incomprehensible yet gargantuan bellow; his ill commands fattened by the thick, rubbery riffs around him as the band rushes into chugging passages straight out of the Bolt Thrower catalogue. But then again this is engaging in a kind of no frills sort of way as fast-paced acts of belligerence spout and spurt blood, guts and shit to a chorus of body hammers. And then we’re swallowed by a doomy, gloomy trudging air of foulness as flashes of Incantation miserably contort and quiver like spasmodic innards.

Everything about this album is guttural, cavernous and wholesome – each track comes in sick flurries so clogged and impenetrable until a spearing lead swirls from within. The general feel is one so stuffy and claustrophobic too; a track such as ‘Teeth & Nails’ adds extra daubs of melancholy to those miserable riffs. But a sonic assault and battery is never far away, and the hideous ‘Majesty’ boils in its own blubber as another doom-infested riff emerges from the gloom, the pea-soup fog rolls of the bass create further sick layers of peat and silt before the pace quickens and the vocals inject their own sorry growls of clotted quality.

The feel all-round is one of old school values as each instrument gnashes with cadaverous delight. ‘Existence Denied’ lumbers through pits of congealed flesh and rust, while ‘Aura Of Flies’ brings that fetid juddering that Hyperdontia has suddenly made their own; as with atmosphere and dread the riffs bulge and burst thick crimson and diseased liquid over the cavern walls.

If you like great, gargantuan mixes of thrashing death speed but also have a penchant for perverse, slower, meandering grooves then Nexus Of Teeth is probably the death metal offering of 2018. And if you were curious, the band name means “the condition of having supernumerary teeth, or teeth that appear in addition to the regular number of teeth”. Somewhat apt then for an album that grates, grinds, rasps, clenches and gnaws like a carnivorous vagina!

Neil Arnold

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