“Are we really alive / Were we ever alive?” screams Josh Graham on Into Dust Becoming – the soul torturing opening song from Guiltless’ Teeth to Sky. A dark poetic concoction where stopped hearts, stolen breath and cracked bones are sucked into the abyss, it’s one of the many ominous vignettes from the Los Angeles four piece’s debut long-player.
Guiltless – vocalist/guitarist, Graham (Battle of Mice); guitarist, Dan Hawkins (A Storm of Light); bassist, Sacha Dunable (Intronaut); and drummer, Billy Graves (Generation of Vipers) – are all about life’s darker observations. On their excellent 2024 self-titled debut EP, with a line like “We have failed every day / The fragile earth is screaming”, it was one of several furious indictments that gave listeners a snapshot of the Guiltless remit. As much about climate change as the political hellstorm we are faced with, Guiltless didn’t sugar coat it then, and they certainly don’t now on Teeth to Sky.
Recorded remotely by the band with the exception of drums (recorded by Travis Kammeyer – also of Generation of Vipers – at Fahrenheit Studios), with the help of Kurt Ballou (High on Fire, Converge et al) behind the mixing desk, like their self-titled EP, on Teeth to Sky Guiltless hit the same frequency as kindred spirits, Great Falls and Kowloon Walled City. The kind of raw, unhinged vitality concocted by getting into a room and emitting all the rage and tension that has built up from a modern world that is fast becoming something designed to smother with dread.
Great Falls Interview: “I write these lyrics about a fear of a reality that I see may be coming”
Per the press release notes, Graham’s focus with Teeth to Sky was to source more input from his band mates in comparison with last year’s release. However thematically, things don’t stray too far from it, and listening to both releases back-to-back, the same dark energy courses through these songs. Take In Starless Reign, a mist of acerbic sludge metal that sees Guiltless painting bleak images likened to being dragged into black pits. And ultimately, it’s a place where they thrive.
One is Two unveils more destruction and aberration, and alongside the lung-busting title track (another inspired by climate change), both see Guiltless working their way through the marshlands Neurosis once inhabited during their Times of Grace-era. However, with subtle new embellishments, Guiltless travel beyond, stretching post-metal out to new, grimy corners.
Guiltless - Teeth to SkyWith low slung guitars akin to ligament tearing from bone, Our Serpent in Circle is like a cyclical dreadscape zeroing in on life’s ills (“In fear of fear / In fear of pain forever”). It’s not often that greyscale noise-rock can feel monolithic but such as the weight of these themes, Guiltless almost reach that point. So too with the crunching groan of Loner Blue Vale – a sea of black and grey tones that erode in menacing ways.
These oppressive atmospheres continue on penultimate track, Landscape of Thorns. Here Guiltless really turn up the pressure (“There’s no language in these spikes / No one lives / Only death inside”). A rolling wave of hell with the subsequent debris etched to tape, it’s the best song Guiltless has written, capturing all their dynamic hallmarks under five minutes.
The walls close in on Illumine. As vipers howl and the kingdom trembles in its last days, Graham uses this frightening mythology as a metaphor for these times (“With death we wander the star line forming on the sun with eyes blind… You’re at the end / There is no grief / Where the stars end and the void speaks / And the dead sing / Illumine”). Echoing the same dark realities of Ray Bradbury’s most poignant moments, and even Neurot founder, Steve Von Till, it’s that hard-edged poeticism where the words conjure up an imagery that overshadows everything else.
Guiltless combine the two to great effect on Teeth to Sky. An album that not just forecasts the ruins but was born from similar ones, too. Hope, evaporated by a higher power, and Guiltless don’t shy away from the fact, telling us in no uncertain terms that, indeed, the world is aflame.
Teeth to Sky is out now via Neurot Recordings. Purchase from Bandcamp.
