Review by Sonny for Adorior - Bleed on My Teeth (2024)

Adorior are a death metal five-piece originally from Sutton in England's West Midlands. Formed in 1994, their recorded output is exceedingly sparse with just three full-lengths and a couple of splits to their name. The band have undergone several lineup changes in their three decades of existence, with vocalist Jaded Lungs (real name Melissa Gray) being the only remaining original member. I hadn't heard of the band prior to this, but on the strength of Bleed on My Teeth, it seems that Adorior are one of the UK's best-kept extreme metal secrets.

This is an album of thrashy death metal with blackened tendencies, but that genre description fails to convey the sheer evil-sounding chaos that is about to assault your eardrums when you put needle to record (or more likely press play on your chosen streaming service). The more I listen to Bleed on My Teeth, the more I am convincing myself that it is a war metal album, albeit with a clearer and less messy production than is often assosciated with the genre. A cursory investigation of their earlier albums reveals that they have toned down the black metal influence on this latest and it sounds even more muscular and bludgeoningly brutal as a result.

Vocalist Jaded Lungs is no angel-voiced siren, but a venomous and vituperative bitch-demon spitting blaphemous and violent tirades interspersed with piercing screams in an evilly disturbing vocal performance that would put the vast majority of her male counterparts to shame and alone makes checking this out mandatory for any connoisseur of the most evil-sounding singers in metal. The lyrics are often exceedingly disturbing, conjuring pictures of scenes I would rather not contemplate too deeply and which show a lot of extreme metal lyricists up for the cop-out wimps they are! Fortunately for us, great though Melissa's vocals are, they are far from the only thing worth hearing on Bleed on My Teeth. The deathly riffs are fast and furious in the main, although the band sometimes drop into more melodic thrash metal riffing, such as the recurrent riff of "Ophidian Strike" which act as an effective contrast to the chaotic mayhem seething around them and feel like a consolidation of all this primal chaos into more coherent and focussed moments when maximum headbanging action can be attained. The proliferation of solos provided by lead guitarist Assassinator feed into the album's chaotic nature, with searing dissonance and Slayer-like short, sharp shocks of screaming howls leaping out at the listener in blistering salvos. And that's all before we get to drummer, Molestör, who is an absolute fucking beast behind the kit. Withering blastbeats are followed by impressively proficient fills as the guy never succumbs to either complacency or fatigue, his kinetic stickwork constantly driving things along in technically impressive and aggressively imaginitive ways.

Despite all these components often giving the impression of chaos, Bleed on My Teeth is actually extremely tight and surprisingly complex for what sounds like such a primal recording. The technical chops of all concerned can be in no doubt and that, combined with the tight songwriting, makes me absolutely amazed that Adorior are not more well-known, especially here in their native UK where we aren't exactly overflowing with top-drawer extreme metal outfits. This is a must for any deaththrash maniacs out there and it's great to know that these British Isles can still put out an album that sounds as fucking me(n)tal as this and that with a cover that is too hardcore for Spotify to show to the public at large!