Album Review: Dormant Ordeal – Tooth and Nail (Willowtip Records)

Polish death metal duo, Dormant Ordeal, are set to release ‘Tooth and Nail’, the band’s first for Willowtip and fourth overall, on April 18th, 2025. The album will be available on CD, vinyl, cassette, and digital formats, and follows widely praised third album, ‘The Grand Scheme of Things’.

A sharper, more evolved, and technically-tinged style of death metal, Dormant Ordeal might have been around since 2008, but they continue to deliver extreme sounds that feel completely modern. All of which is on garish display from the start with the savagery of Halo of Bones. Hell, even the intro that precedes it (Wije i Mary, Pt. 1) is steeped in atmospheric danger.

It does an outstanding job of setting the scene, but it’s the aforementioned Halo of Bones and the following pairing of Horse Eater and Orphans that truly shows us what this album has to offer and the depths that Dormant Ordeal have sunk to. All so they can bring us something unbelievably fast, undeniably heavy, and unrelenting in wicked tone. The head will be banging hard, but thanks to layers of technical proficiency and progressive attitudes, there’s more to this album then may first seem.

What more proof is needed than a giant of a track like Solvent? One second short of eight minutes and featuring a cacophony of brutish instrumentals, demonic vocals, atmospheric elements that give it a darker, almost blackened hue, and unbelievably emphatic metal harmonisation. It’s a very special track, but it’s also far from the only gargantuan listen on the album.

Later, there is Against the Dying of the Light, a track with some of the album’s most serrated sounding guitars, focused tempo switches, and some thrilling twists to the death metal formula thanks to genre-defying ideas. Then there is Everything That Isn’t Silence Is Trivial, a track with heightened drama, and some interesting experimental touches, but will be remembered mainly for its unforgiving level of meaty metal noise. For all its elaborate detail, let it not be forgotten that at its core, Tooth and Nail is a death metal album.

Making up the rest of the album is even more heaviness and speed via Dust Crown, an eye-watering experience, and Wije i Mary, Pt. 2, a pulverising finale that is mostly instrumental only, aside from some brief, breathy vocals. As powerful as everything else.

This is an album that leaves you feeling bruised all over but really refreshed because of its modernised stance and creative turns. It might be death metal, but it’s an evolved form of death metal.

Dormant Ordeal – Tooth and Nail Track Listing:

1. Wije i Mary, Pt. 1
2. Halo of Bones
3. Horse Eater
4. Orphans
5. Solvent
6. Dust Crown
7. Against the Dying of the Light
8. Everything That Isn’t Silence Is Trivial
9. Wije i Mary, Pt. 2

Links

Bandcamp | Willowtip | Facebook | Instagram