Wednesday 18 July 2012

TEEPH - VietNamaste Review

Vietnamaste cover art

TEEPH are a Sludge/Grind/Noise Rock Band from Chico, California.

The members are:

Sesar Sanchez (guitar), Alex Coffin (drums),Matt Shilts (bass) 

TEEPH play a hard hitting and intriguing blend of Sludge, Noise, Grind to brutal effect. The guys describe their music as:

" Three guys from Chico, CA who play some version of heavy math rock/post-metal. More like Hella than Lamb of God, our influences include Botch, Converge, Melt Banana, and Zappa. Listen Carefully! "

Well I can definitely hear the Botch and Converge influences on their superb new album - VietNamaste. A 9 song collection of hard hitting tunes which is packed full of brilliant Sludge Riffage. Throw in excellent pissed off hardcore based vocals and you have a truly uncompromising album.

These guys go for the jugular from the very start and don't let go until the album is truly over.

I will admit this was an album I didn't like first. I thought the guys were being too clever with the mix of genres and that the album wasn't really impressing me as much. But I relented and after the 3rd listen I was hooked. Something just clicked and then I started actually digging the music on show.

Then I was hooked by then. Especially on tracks such as "Brokowski", "You Should Probably Stop Being An Asshole" and "Teeph Goes On Welfare".

It is a very social conscience album with some great hard hitting vocals and lyrics to match. Any band influenced by Botch and Converge are not going to be the happiest of bands are they. And Thank Fuck they are not. This is top-notch Experimental Sludge/Noise/Grind Rock to headbang to either on your stereo or a local rock bar.

The guys are all seriously talented musicians and the way they play the mixture of genres is equally astonishing to listen to at times. For a 3 man band these guys fucking rule.

The album is superbly produced and you can hear every distorted and twisted note to brutal precision.

The guys do show their tender side on the excellent slow-burning guitar driven track - "This Song Is Called". A 5 minute track that shows these guys are not all about carnage and destruction, Quite possibly my fave track on this great album.

So if you want to hear some great Sludge/Grind/Noise Rock then I can't recommend these guys highly enough. They have released a great album they rightly should be getting praise for.

It's a chaotic experimental mind-fuck blast of top-notch tunes which I think will be making a lot of best of 2012 lists. Highly Recommended.

You can buy this album from BandCamp right now. If you like what you hear you can download their equally brilliant S/T debut album on BandCamp Pay Anything You Want Deal.

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