Tooth - Tooth [LP]

Release Date: September 26, 2025
Label: Focused Moron Records

It’s a minor miracle that this record exists at all. Even if, for a time, twenty years ago, it felt inevitable.

Back then, Tooth was an upstart metal band of longtime friends who’d found a searing blend of sludge metal, classic heavy metal, doom and punk with a distinctive Durham terroir, and barrelled through it with an easy chemistry that can only come from close
camaraderie. They quickly became local favorites and regulars on the regional touring circuit, sharing stages with now luminaries like Baroness, Kylesa, Torche, Inter Arma and Black Tusk. They cut two EPs for Churchkey Records: 2007’s Animality and a 2009 split with their Philly-based brothers-in-arms, The Claw.

But soon after releasing the split, Tooth was laid to rest. And for a good while, that was that. Life carried on, and the band members — vocalist J-me Guptill, guitarists Ben Wilson and Richard James, bassist Ryland Fishel and drummer Noah Kessler — pursued other projects while the thing that is Tooth laid buried in some sour soil out
by the Eno River.

But Tooth couldn’t stay dead. The Tooth that was buried over a decade ago isn’t the same Tooth that crawled out from the grave. It’s true, what Fred Gwynne says as Jud Crandall in Pet Sematary: “Sometimes dead is better.” Just not this time.

The band is a meaner, snarling thing now. The intervening decades have only served to tighten the band’s vision and its sound — as though it spent those years of absence like whiskey in a barrel growing stronger in silent darkness. As much as this Tooth is recognizably the same — the same five members, building upon the sonic template they carved two decades ago — there’s no question this Tooth is something else, too. Nothing buried comes back the same. This time it came back better. 

Even in their first run, Tooth was a tough act to pin down. They’ve been described, with various degrees of accuracy, as “prog-sludge,” “Southern punk-metal,” and even ”beard metal.” This album doesn’t make it any easier.

As much as Tooth intentionally bucks genre tropes, they’ve proven to be remarkably consistent. Across all six tracks, the band showcases a flair for dynamics, urgent and anthemic crescendoes, and — crucially — bringing the riffs.