Review Summary: orthodontists beware.
Hyperdontia is, by basic definition, a medical condition where too many teeth grow in the mouth. It sounds innocent enough, after all, more teeth equals more bite, right? Unfortunately the outcome is often far more horrendous than just an uncanny ability to eat beef jerky at warp-speed. In fact, I can almost guarantee that a quick google image search is likely to fuel not only your own nightmares, but the nightmares of your countless ancestors should you be lucky enough to bear offspring in spite of such awful taste in music. Teeth. Teeth everywhere. All reaching in myriad directions and chomping their way through every vestige of symmetry and order the physical universe holds dear. It's truly a sight to behold, and one that makes a perfect moniker for an internationally collaborated death metal band with a penchant for crafting jaw-clenching tunes that bite harder than a pissed-off snapping turtle.
It would be a pun in poor taste to say that Dark Descent Records were most likely chomping at the bit to unleash Hyperdontia's debut LP unto a world ripe with juicy flesh and delicious fat, but to suggest that
Nexus of Teeth needs tongue-in-cheek commentary to get by on paper would be a real disservice. These 34 minutes of dental catastrophe aren't some haphazard rehash of osdm's most plebeian tripe, but rather, a stately refinement of yore's putrid excrescence. Posing as a crunchy slab of long in the tooth death metal that takes on the noxious broth of gutter muck that old Incantation trademarked, they spice up these trendy fumes with bug-eyed polyrhythms and cephalopodic grooves รก la Demilich circa '93 to craft a smile that really stands out of the crowd. Romping tunes like "Of Spire and Thorn" and "Euphoric Evisceration" knuckle-drag onto the scene like elephant-sized Dolph Lundgrens made of only molars and rotten gumline, smashing every orthodontic utensil in sight before making off with the courtesy toothbrushes you'll surely need after dining on this grissley album, yet behind the lips of this beast is a breath of technicality that keeps things chewy. You see, an eagerness to wade through
Nexus of Teeth's monochromatic ouevre has its tasty rewards, and if you do in fact manage to trudge through, you'll quickly notice complex phrasing, quick tempo-shifts and psychotic polyrhythms all find their way into the gaping maw of Hyperdontia's old-school homage in a way that bolsters a strong sense of relevance. Innovation of the stark variety be damned, this is still an important album in death metal's endless quest for horrific perfection.
Between the all-too-familiar manic blasting and crumbling mid-tempo passages, this part-Danish-part-Turkish quartet's knack for lefthanded riffs and sideways songwriting boasts more than enough athleticism to keep things constantly engaging in lieu of a rather one-dimensional aesthetic. No pansy-ass intros, clean breaks or interludes here; this is tits-to-the-wind aggression on a cosmic scale that makes no bones about being absolutely relentless. To the point, the atmosphere is a claustrophobic mess of mountain sized canines adorning a Jupiter-sized space-vagina hellbent on eating your home planet, and with it comes a bevy of angular pinch leads, syncopated fills, and curious explorations of churning time and movement that work themselves together like pieces of the most disgusting puzzle you've ever laid eyes on. It's intricate, interlocking, and meticulously crafted, but loses no strength by way of it's detail-oriented architecture thanks to a production that's muddy where it counts and annunciated where its needed. All the most flattering angles are captured in good light thanks to this dialled-in timbre, and they're put to good use with nuanced pacing and razor-sharp licks underpinning this mantelpiece of a debut. With all the guts to snatch the glory and all the skill to cut the rough diamonds of cavernous death-doom into shining gems, Hyperdontia have entered the fold with an unflinching intention to, as EL-P of Run The Jewels put it in 2013,
"put a tooth through the flesh of the palm that you jack with".
