Taking the heavy industrial sounds of White Zombie and Rammstein, throwing in a touch of Filter’s heavy-duty melodicism and Marilyn Manson’s nihilistic grind (not to mention a sneaky love of 80s synth pop), 3Teeth have managed to carve out a sound that not only successfully harks back to the great industrial acts of the 90s, but which also emerges as its own entity.
Now returning with their fourth album, EndEx, 3Teeth follow up 2019’s well-received Metawar with a twelve-song, fifty-minute set, layered with industrial elements and bristling with rage. Darker and heavier than its predecessor, this long-anticipated album ups the ante in almost every conceivable way, while remaining true to the template laid down on previous releases.
EndEx opens with the sinister, mid-paced industrial slog of Xenogenesis, Nick Rossi maintaining a leaden tempo, heavily augmented by Xavier Swafford’s synths. It makes for a darkly cinematic opening, reminiscent of The Fragile at its heaviest and, when the guitars finally emerge, they’re set to stun. Having established a dark template for the album, 3Teeth offer the more straightforward Acme Death Machine. A stabbing track led by elastic guitars with at least one foot in djent territory, 3Teeth take no prisoners and Alexis Mincolla delivers a typically assured performance behind the mic.
With its lyrical tale of self-imposed destruction, Slum Planet is an excoriating take down of the capitalist agenda that has led the planet to the brink of ecological crisis, delivered in the style of a pseudo-political rally complete with brutal marching beat, catchy chorus and sneering vocals. While (perhaps inevitabkly) reminiscent of Antichrist-era Manson, its pertinent themes make it an insidiously brilliant and deeply relevant track. Keeping things dynamic, What’s Left strips things down to their electronic core, all howling sirens, and gleaming banks of synths. The guitars lend a hand on a ferocious chorus but, in allowing more space in a frequently busy mix, the band ensure the album doesn’t become one-dimensional in its approach. Indeed, with its pulsing, neon-lit core, it sounds more like Prodigy than NIN.
Things take a darker turn on Merchant of the Void, a heavy stomp with a cruelly distorted bassline and a sense of impending doom. Then there’s the brilliant Higher Than Death, which successfully juxtaposes its crushingly heavy riff with one of the album’s most overtly synth-pop influenced choruses. Few bands so effectively pair metallic weight with perfect pop melodicism, but 3Teeth make it look easy, making it an album highlight in the process.
Kicking off the second half, Ali3n takes a much tougher approach, the guitars placed centre-stage, although the synths periodically burst forth, resulting in a heavy industrial pulse guaranteed to set the dancefloor alight. With its guest spot from Ho99o9, the slow-burn Plutonomicon Paralyz emerges from its throbbing synth backdrop to take in stabbing guitars, unhinged screams and, of course, Ho99o9’s gritty rap. A potent pairing, it makes perfect sense that the band would choose this bruising collaboration for a single, and it is a standout cut on the album. Segueing out of a coda that nods towards Rob Zombie’s obsession with porn samples, the slow-paced grind of Scorpion scrapes along in the darkness, the sonic equivalent of the Terminator’s final stand in the original movie – corroded and battle-scarred, yet deadly for all that. Even here, however, the band incorporate a sense of melody, a lone female vocal drifting in the mix. And then we’re on the home stretch. The band’s love of synthpop is laid bare on Drift, a lovely track that concludes the album proper on a reflective note, before 3Teeth pay rather more direct tribute to their influences with a cover of Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants To Rule The World. It’s a good song, and the band clearly have fun covering this once-ubiquitous earworm, but it feels more like a bonus than part of the album proper, although thematically it’s on point.
Perfectly poised on the line between industrial and synth pop, 3Teeth make stunning use of their influences to create music that is darkly compelling, lyrically insightful, and yet endlessly danceable. With ruthlessly pared-back arrangements and pitch-perfect production, the album flies by and it is another incredibly strong entry in 3Teeth’s increasingly essential catalogue. 10/10
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