There are those bands that once you indulge in their music, the way your brain processes that particular art form changes a little bit. Somehow, my TikTok algorithm led me a few years ago to Faetooth, a Los Angeles-based doom power that creates heavy, yet enchanting songs, stuff that crawls into your imagination and helps you see new colors. I hear things differently since introduced to them.
“Labyrinthine” is the band’s second record and first for The Flenser, and it’s a 10-track, 55-minute excursion that picks up where 2002’s “Remnants of the Vessel” (our No. 6 album that year) leaves off and then goes into new terrain. Thematically, the band—bassist/vocalist Jenna Garcia, guitarist/vocalist Ari May, drummer Rah Kanan—takes on inner turmoil, personal wounds, and loss, among others, with their heaviness intertwining breath-takingly with softer tones and psychedelic flourishes. This album is one that may take a few visits to truly set in, which was the case for their debut, but it’s easy to instantly be spellbound by the music.
“Iron Gate” bathes in feedback, solemnity and clean singing bubbling, and then the power punches in, adding to the thicker haze. The singing lures while the growls scrape passages beneath, and then voices harmonize. Hypnosis mixes as the energy burns off into the horizon. “Death of Day” has the bass sliding and the guitars trudging, dreamy singing icing over wounds. “White Noise” is muddy at first before cleaner guitars and tingling singing activate emotions, then screams belt, letting lava gust before the temps drop again. “October” is ceremonial and chilly before guitars blaze and churn, a strong chorus pumping blood from a pierced heart. Guitars buzz as the pain permeates the senses, the power surges, and the cosmos swallows everything whole. “Mater Dolorosa” digs in, the singing feeling like a dreamscape, the playing buckling while swimming through tar. Closer “Meet Your Maker” is the longest track at 8:28, and it dissolves into blood, the singing mesmerizing before the fires blast, sweeping with strange speaking and increasingly harrowing shadows. “Labyrinthine” is Faetooth at their most vulnerable, at least to this point, and their ethereal brand of doom remains the type that works best when absorbed in dark silence, with only you and the music there to connect. (Sept. 5)
For more on the band, go here: https://faetooth.bandcamp.com/
To buy the album, go here: https://nowflensing.com/collections/faetooth
For more on the label, go here: https://nowflensing.com/
Meat Mead Metal 