Fuming Mouth - "The Ringing Bell"

Fuming Mouth return with more urgency, confidence, and determination with their hardcore-infused death metal on The Ringing Bell.

Finding yourself on the brink of death, faced with your own mortality, especially at a younger age is a harrowing experience. It can happen many ways, but that grim reality is rarely welcomed. You can philosophically prepare for it through whichever philosophy or religion works best, but the moment itself is indescribable. Stranger still is the recovery period. Therapy helps, of course, but there is no cure for the more immediate and lasting certainty that every academic, theological, or artistic expression can only come so close to transferring to their respective consumers. People who have faced death and survived carry a burden that others cannot know.

So it was for Fuming Mouth vocalist Mark Whalen who announced his diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in November of 2021, shortly after Fuming Mouth had signed to Nuclear Blast Records. AML is an aggressive cancer that can be fatal within weeks of detection if not treated early. Fortunately, between a GoFundMe and some benefit shows, Mark seems to have beaten the disease. Naturally, the band’s following album Last Day Of Sun (2023) was thematically tied to that experience. However, Fuming Mouth, perhaps due to their higher profile record label, didn’t quite deliver the same old school death metal that brought them wider notoriety on 2019’s The Grand Descent. Last Day Of Sun featured some clean singing and more pronounced hardcore elements. I really liked their first album, but found their second tepid because of this.

I did catch them live, however, opening for Gwar a couple years ago. That performance was raw and inspiring, reminding me how much I like Fuming Mouth. The hardcore elements were even more noticeable, but in a live setting, they made more sense. Now, Fuming Mouth returns with their third full length, The Ringing Bell, on Triple B Records, a label primarily known for their hardcore output. Recorded by Kurt Ballou at his famous God City Studios, The Ringing Bell takes full advantage of their more hardcore adjacent identity aligned with these pedigrees while maintaining their death metal status.

“Cheat Death” opens with punishing hardcore riffing and a squall of death metal guitars. The chorus and verses dance between breakdowns of a distinctly death metal character while overall the track maintains its hardcore pacing and feel. As the title implies, we are still focusing on near-death experiences, but time has passed and Whalen & company seem far more confident and self assured about the ordeal. The second track, “Self-Exhumed” drives this home with the refrain, ‘I’m back from the dead, and I’m taking my respect/I’m back from the dead, and I’m taking you with me‘ followed by Whalen bellowing, ‘I’m alive,’ while all instruments drop out after the second verse. It is a powerful moment and song both emotionally and in performance. There is no doubt that Fuming Mouth‘s embrace of hardcore and death metal are merged brilliantly.

“Finally Fearless” and other tracks feature guitar solos while also incorporating gang vocals, keeping that careful balance between the two genres like a tight rope walker. Whalen’s attitude feels closer to New York hardcore than Suffocation, as well, but the sound is overall much heavier than hardcore. This puts Fuming Mouth in a rare category on two fronts. Firstly, they are one of the few death metal bands that I can think of that still feel fun. Mostly, I find death metal too preoccupied with sounding menacing or technically impressive, and while those things can be fun, I mean the kind of death metal that is here to mosh and party. The second rarity that Fuming Mouth embody is that of the death metal leaning hardcore band that actually gets death metal right, or at least isn’t relying on glossy production and endless metalcore breakdowns. As if Undeath and Integrity found the ideal common ground.

“A Blaze of Nihilism” goes full bore death metal, nearly death grind at the start and sinks into an almost death-doom pace making it feel all the more brutal. There are enough death growls on The Ringing Bell to satisfy die-hard death metal fans. Hell, “Hidden In The Moor” has one of the best OSDM intros I’ve heard in a few years. They work in a chorus that delivers the kind of aggressively uplifting feeling of a Madball chorus. The next track lumbers through deep breakdown passages before “Flourishing Flesh” tears through the death metal with a 1 minute 17 second d-beat ripper. It makes a perfect stopgap between the slower intro to the title track, which also features clean vocals here and there. While I thought the clean vocals on Last Day of Sun were a little formulaic, here they have a distant Baroness quality that works very well. It feels much more authentic and purposeful.

I burned myself out on death metal after a several year obsession with digging through the vast underground. I haven’t listened to much death metal over the last few years as a result, and half of what I did hear left me unimpressed. I listen to hardcore more frequently, these days, so maybe the hardcore influences on The Ringing Bell are bridging a gap, but this is one of the best death metal records in a year, at least. The production is masterfully done, as can be expected from Kurt Ballou. It is punchy, well defined, and doesn’t feel overproduced in a way that would turn me off of death metal or hardcore. While the themes on this record aren’t strictly about overcoming death, the songs that are feel flushed with a renewed determinism that ranks highly on the most optimistic records I’ve heard this year. The world is grim, right now, and a lot of music reflects that. Sometimes you need to stand up and scream a defiance against death itself. Let the bell ring, I’ll face it with aplomb.

Fuming Mouth dropped their best album with The Ringing Bell. Their mastery of playing hardcore as death metal musicians keeps the songs tight, each moment a carefully planned shift in gnarly meant to be savored, no matter how briefly. This is death metal with a purpose, not simply gore porn or abstracted science fiction with 5 solos per song. This is life affirming death metal. This is death affirming hardcore. This is one of the best heavy albums of the year.