Album Review: Ginger Wildheart - "Teeth"

Ginger Wildheart has always been a man to hit you with new material when you're least expecting it and to be honest, following on from the worthy but rather sedate Sinners album from last year, the prospect of something showing off the harder edge to his output was definitely something that piqued our interest.

Teeth is very much a back to basics punk effort, crashing through 16 tracks in just 26 minutes and seeing the G-man at arguably his heaviest since the brutal Mutation albums of a few years ago. Right from the opening political tirade of Not My Country (very much an anthem for these times where the choice between Sunak and Starmer increasingly has the feel of two eunuchs fighting over a punctured condom), the guy definitely means business here and this album is pretty much one concrete-heavy right hook after another as he skewers religious bigots (Digital Elimination, Thoughts And Prayers), online mob mentality (Witch Hunt), braindead tabloid readers (Happy John) and the UK's archiac drug laws (DRUGUK) with equal venom. This is very much old school hardcore in the GBH/Poison Idea mould and all the better for it - there's only really the Clash style This Is Survival that lets more of a melody bleed through but overall this brutal approach suits the material down to the ground. You get the impression that Ginger has been saving up some of this venom for a long time and the likes of Straight To Hate and No definitely feel almost like an exorcism of angry thoughts that you've let get stored up in your head for much too long.

If it looked like Ginger was maybe heading off to calmer pastures with the Sinners then Teeth is very much proof that the anger and energy that's informed so much of his best stuff down the years is very much still there. Unfortunately it's now been taken down off Bandcamp but if you missed it during that 24 hours it was up there then I strongly recommend you keep an eye out for when it comes out officially. A welcome reminder of what this man is capable of.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑 (9/10)

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