One of the best parts about reviewing albums is getting to deconstruct the music on the album and expose the soft squishy underbelly that the band hides deep within the tracks. The newest release from 3TEETH, Metawar (RED Music), is a case in point. The third studio album from the Los Angeles-based band is a cataclysmic master stroke pregnant with thinly veiled innuendo and tightly coiled enigma. Let me break that down for you in Skullgurl terms, this album is fanfuckingtastical.

One of the things I noticed immediately about this album was the evolution of the band’s’ approach to song structure. Don’t get me wrong, the tracks on the first two albums were solidly crafted. For example, track number two, ‘Alter’, gives off a muddled altruistic glow, not with the lyrics, but with the instrumental composition. The craft of conveying an overall message with just the instrumentals is a one that is hellacious one, to say the least. Another attribute of this album that tickled my fancy was their ability to flip the entire vibe of the album effortlessly. ‘Blackout’, catapults the listener back to the days when Industrial music was virginal and pure, with none of that sub-genre malarkey. This track shows emphatically how very deep the roots of the band’s influences really are. ‘Exxxit’, also offers up the same writhing, pulsating attack, deliciously rancid and vile. I can still feel the depravity this track injected into my soul, no lie.

I am rarely surprised by tracks on the albums I review. To say I was caught off guard by final track on Metawar would be a colossal understatement. When I do reviews I let the album run in its entirety before I start writing, just to get a feel of the album. When the song started, I was struck with an eerie bolt of deja vu, the voices in my head screaming “WTF, this is a Top 40 song! Since when is 3teeth Top 40”? The song that was pouring out of my earbuds and into my gray matter was 3Teeth doing a cover of Foster The People’s mega-hit, ‘Pumped Up Kicks’!

For a band that has an impressive run in their career so far opening for Tool, Rammstein, and Danzig, to Metawar being produced by the great Sean Beavan (Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson), their output is beginning to catch up to their early hype.

8 / 10

SKULLGURL METALCHICK