ninehertz

2025 has come full circle. The first release of January I was truly excited about was Teleost’s Three Originals and now their debut full length arrives to cap off the year. They’ve promised so much so far, so there’s an excitement as I play Atavism for the first time.

The artwork is a perfect representation of their sound – prehistoric noise where volume and thunderous rhythms are made to be heard for miles away and scare away predators. Teleost are doom fanatics, addicted to tone and amps, doom as drone and where the quality of their music is measured in the thickness of their riffs.

The album doesn’t disappoint, it is everything we’ve come to know from the band, their vision now honed so that this shines. As Volcano erupts, what should be an ominous doom tone enters, but instead makes me feel warm through a genuine kinetic excitement. It is of course mountainous, dense droning doom with well-dwelling vocals that echo through the cacophony. It drags every inch out of the riff, repeating to infinitum.

This is as good as this style of doom can be, not heard to this specific setting and quality since Bismuth’s heyday. It isn’t all straight ahead metronomic bludgeon, and in the more introspective passages the “Om if they were heavier” thought that has followed them rings true. There are a couple of tracks re-recorded from their demo (when known as Uncle Bari), given new life and sounding bigger than ever.

What’s key is that, despite this being their debut album, despite their time honing their sound, they’ve crucially not over-produced this. It is still dingy as hell, maintain a raw live feel, you can hear the amps creak, the feedback scar. Doom should never be clean and this is truly grimy.

It ends with Canyon with a clear Earth lineage, both in its stripped-down opening and as it gets louder, when you can sense its mind warping objectives manifesting, achieved through a beautiful tone and transcendental repetition.

Atavism is everything Teleost have been building to, what all evidence to date suggested would coalesce when they reached their debut album. It is a glorious doom record.