Milk Teeth – ‘Vile Child’ Album Review.
Milk Teeth – Bristol, England, United Kingdom.
Cover photo credit – Anabasis Media.
Milk Teeth are a biting Bristol blend of Punk-Rock and gritty Grunge, and their debut full-length, Vile Child, is one of the most exciting debut rock albums I’ve heard in a while. Following up their 2015 EP Sad Sack, which had the brilliant ‘Vitamins’ (Go on, Click Here), Milk Teeth grow into a set of fully fleshed adult teeth that your dentist would be very proud of.
However, co-vocalist and founding member Josh Bannister left the band a couple of weeks before the release of Vile Child, so the band are already in a new era for themselves, which just sets them up even better for their eventual follow up.
If you’ve been following their Facebook page, you would have seen all the live footage and tour updates showing that the band are well and truly over this hurdle however.
‘Brickwork’ is literally starts the album off with a jump, it’s bouncy like a bowl of raspberry jelly and cream and the Grunge influence is clear, but it’s with a refined taste that Milk Teeth thread throughout the album, stirring in elements of Post-Hardcore and good old Punk-Rock along the way that means that Vile Child isn’t just “another 90’s revivalist album”.
Instead, ‘Brickwork’ leads the way in a track-listing that is chilled, compelling, and chattering with swooning lead guitar lines – see the intro to ‘Driveway Birthday’.
‘Burger Drop’ is your go to if you’re big on your Nirvana/Hole because that’s the line where Milk Teeth walk here, they spit in some Brody Dalle and Garbage and switch on some aggressive Shoegaze vibes more so than Wolf Alice on their debut last year.
We get a portrait of the 21st century youth, the now seemingly old fashioned way because Milk Teeth aren’t about being in the club on a Thursday for their girls birthday, drinking champagne but still being thirsty – unless their at local Bath club Moles playing a gig, one can hope.
‘Swear Jar (again)’, a re-recording of the same song from the EP, Smiling Politely, is your token “lighter-in-the-air”, but it’s also that needed balance between something like ‘Brickwork’, and ‘Kabuki’, a delicate ballad that see Milk Teeth lean on their softer gummy side which actually plays off quite well considering it’s a lot more intimate than the rest of the album.
‘Get a Clue’ is interesting, it’s spearheaded by former member Josh Bannister and opens the band into Post-Hardcore territory with his harsh vocals that I could really get into on another album, but the song unfortunately feels a bit stilted amongst the track-listing, in the words of the girl I’m currently seeing, ‘the album was so cool and chill and then this comes out of nowhere‘.
The latter half of the album sees more vocal performances from Bannister and I have to say I don’t feel them as much as I do the vocals of lead singer Becky Blomfield, whose voice has always been part of my main, main attraction to the band.
However, it all works on closer ‘Sunbaby’, it sounds like Black Metal band Deafheaven could have put this one together with it’s Post-Rock/Shoegaze adaptation of the traditional soft/loud/soft verse/chorus structure.
I walk away from this one with Bannisters growl of ‘So why don’t you tell me‘ ringing in my ears and the end of this song is huge, Milk Teeth have conquered their sound with grandiose and I can only hope they start making bigger sounding songs because ‘Sunbaby’ shows they have potential; if you weren’t already impressed by the rest of the album or the band to date that is.
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