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Teeth Of The Hydra
There's a breed of modern day bands that have effectively put the
'heavy' back into heavy metal – as mammoth riffs and mid-paced tempos
do battle with lyrics that appear to be straight out of classic novels.
Ohio-based trio Teeth of the Hydra are masters of this yet unnamed
metal sub-genre, regaling their listeners with a concept album
detailing the harsh arctic life while pummeling them with "1970's black
metal" (as group mastermind, Matt Miner describes their music). The
group originally formed in 2002, and has been slogging it out ever
since. But with a new album on fierce metal indie label Tee Pee
Records, Greenland, and a solid following in their
hometown of Columbus and the nearby region, Teeth of the Hydra appear
ready to break on through to the other side.
"We went to Chicago," explains Miner, singer/guitarist for Teeth of the
Hydra. "We basically lived in the studio. All of our gear became the
living room - we brought a bunch of toys and went nuts for seven days.
Probably could have been there for a lot longer than that, but that
would probably just be indulgent. I think we did alright on the vibe of
the record."
Joining Miner in the band is one behemoth of a rhythm section – bassist
Matt Bailey and drummer Jamie Stillman. Miner: "We were just a bunch of
friends from way back in the day. I lived in a one-bedroom apartment,
and all I had in my apartment was a full-stack, a guitar, and a
distortion pedal. Jamie played guitar in a fairly well known band
called The Party of Helicopters. We played a lot of shows with them,
then our drummer moved to New York City, and Jamie called, demanding to
join the band. 'I'm your new fuckin' drummer' - that's what he said
[laughs]. We've been kicking around with him since 2003."
With such bands as Entombed, Celtic Frost, Amebix, and the Melvins
serving as prime influences, Teeth of the Hydra got the ball rolling
with a self-released debut album. Miner: "I started a label,
VolumeHammer, and put out our first CD, We Are the Fantasy. We’re sold out and probably won’t repress it."
It wasn't long before the head of Tee Pee Record, Tony Presedo, came
across the band, and liked what he heard. "Tony emailed us out of the
blue - to this day, I still don't understand how he heard the music. We
were playing two or three shows in New York City, and he said he was
going to come out." Soon after, Teeth of the Hydra found themselves at
work on their Tee Pee debut with producer Sanford Parker, who has
worked with the likes of Pelican, Unearthly Trance and Buried at Sea.
Miner also points out that for the most part, Greenland
works as a concept album of sorts. "The album is based upon stories
about 'the Viking life.’ When the Vikings began settling in Greenland,
there were Inuit that already lived there. The Vikings began to die
because they wouldn't ask the Inuit how to fish through the ice. The
songs have a running thread of being set in the arctic, so we decided
to call the album Greenland. ‘Sawing Through the Ice' is about falling through a crevice on a fishing trip [laughs]. The slow song, 'The Garden of Rotten Teeth,'
is about a guy who is arrested in his sleep and never knows what crime
he committed. He is going to prison, which includes a journey by rail
from Moscow to Siberia, to work in a nuclear city - radiation rotting
his teeth out. I grew up where all these ancient burial mounds are, and
the song 'Voices Over Conus' - it's about the secrets of the burial mounds."
While the heaviness of the trio comes across in the grooves of Greenland,
it's their live show where they give a whole new meaning to the word
'heavy.' "It's a lot more unhinged, that's for sure. A lot more fury,
not to say that the album's not, but there’s a lot of feedback. It’s
really probably too loud [laughs]." And it shouldn't be long before the
group pulls up to a venue near you. "Definitely going to be up and down
the East Coast in 2006, and we'll be on the West Coast in 2007.
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