Album review: Faetooth – Labyrinthine

Los Angeles trio Faetooth aren’t just making doom, they're conjuring it. Made up of Ari May (guitars, vocals), Jenna Garcia (bass, vocals) and Rah Kanan (drums) their second offering, Labyrinthine, showcases their brand of self-proclaimed fairy doom, inviting you into a musical forest appropriately thick with riffs, sorrow and supernatural gloom.

The opening pair of Iron Gate and Death Of Day set the tone early on with eerie, ethereal textures giving way to sludgy, gut-rattling riffs. There’s beauty here, but it’s wrapped in thorns. The vocals float like ghostly figures swooning across an eerie swamp, pulling you deeper into a dream that’s turning into a nightmare. It’s the sound of moonlight being swallowed by mist.

Then comes the standout Hole, inciting even more of this visceral catharsis. What starts as a spooky meditation erupts into a jagged descent, all harsh screams and unrelenting weight. It’s a track about facing trauma head-on, and it hurts. That theme of confrontation bleeds into White Noise, a six-minute slab of inner turmoil and shoegaze-laced doom. Drawn from a diary and delivered with knife-twisting sincerity, it’s as raw emotionally as it is sonically.

Clocking in at eight minutes, closer Meet Your Maker is a towering final spell that is part shoegaze cathedral, part doom-laden underworld. It shimmers, it crushes, and it aches. You can almost hear the wings of dark fairies beating behind the fuzz-soaked riffs, leading you to a brutal, beautiful end.

Faetooth have taken their signature sound and let it grow teeth, claws, and something like a conscience. This is an oddly pleasing journey through shadow and self, making you question the existence of everything.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Lowen, Chelsea Wolfe, Thou

Labyrinthine is released on September 5 via The Flenser