Review Summary: An excellent sludge/doom EP, The Space Between Your Teeth sounds as breathtaking as it does spiteful.
Ensuring two 15+ minute tracks remain interesting is hard enough, but an attempt at orchestrating a synergetic relationship between the two goes beyond even that. Consequentially, any band attempting such a feat could struggle under the weight of their own ambition; yet, particularly impressively given their youth as a band, Keeper pull it off with marked aplomb. Considered individually, 'The King' and 'The Fool' are two excellent examples of sludge/doom. As a package,
The Space Between Your Teeth is nothing short of mesmerising.
Acting not so much as separate tracks as a single piece split into two acts, the relationship between 'The King' and 'The Fool' is arguably
The Space Between Your Teeth's greatest asset. Starting proceedings with a riff akin to sludge stalwarts Thou, its immediacy belies the degree of transformation it will undergo. As the track progresses, the earlier sludge influences gradually become overshadowed by an amalgam of blackened and funeral doom, Jacob Lee's obnoxious rasps twisting with guitars as dense as black hole matter and offset slightly by quieter, more reflective passages. Approaching its final third, 'The King' morphs once more, as progressions more typical of post-rock underpin
The Space Between Your Teeth's thundering bass presence to form a soundscape that is beautiful as it is jarring, especially when deployed alongside Lee's tormented shrieks. After the briefest of interludes, 'The Fool' takes all that 'The King' built up, and destroys it emphatically. The tremolo picking which brought 'The King' to its peculiarly gorgeous climax disappears into decaying feedback. The riffs become noticeably darker, initially forming a churning mass and eventually becoming something more defined, and the vocal performance, already horrific in its delivery becomes more desperate, as bilious cracks emerge towards the track's midpoint. Its final transition shows even the doomier, more inherently emotional facets disappear by the end, replaced by the sludgy emphasis that started 'The King' and a seemingly dulled, defeated sentiment to Lee's final words.
Lyrically there is plenty of room for interpretation. The usage of imagery from the crucifixion (
"hold me to my words and place a crown upon my head / thorns, I bleed" and
"the laborious hike down the last golden mile / You carry my cross" being two examples) and the subserviant yet bitter nature of 'The Fool''s lyrics can be seen as portraying aspects of Jesus' death. However, this is not explicitly the case, and could instead be seen as a metaphor for a complex, resentful relationship between two people - or, for that matter, something entirely different. Regardless of what the concept actually
was for Keeper, the end result was something that is clear they were right to pursue. An excellent EP,
The Space Between Your Teeth sounds as breathtaking as it does spiteful.
