Alright kids, line up. Time to dig in and lose some hearing. Teeth have dropped their latest single “Concubine” and it is a good ol’ belt sander to the face.
California’s Teeth have been putting out bangers since 2014. Maybe some of you were on the Unremittance train back when it first dropped that year. Maybe their splits with Fister or Barghest grabbed you. Or maybe you remember them from dropping one of the best records of 2019: The Curse of Entrophy. It came out pretty late in the year, just before the chaotic entrance of 2020, but remains a master blaster of death and grind, with plenty of doom to go around. And in 2021, the band is coming back to smash us with more.
“Concubine” is the third track from Teeth’s newest EP Finite. The two-minute and change track is a slab of death metal with some doomy bits. It starts out chugging and takes a turn for a breakdown before picking itself back up again and getting slick with its riffing. There is a bluesy undertone to the overall piece that is buried under all the brutality. The song even gets a little deathgrindy halfway through.
Lyrically there is a sorrow to the song. As guitarist/vocalist Erol Ulug says:
"’Concubine’" is about the destruction of self and roping others into the abyss along with you. The illusion of control and the realization that you are powerless at the whim of emotional undercurrents. It's about acknowledging painful instabilities within yourself as well as your remarkably unhealthy and useless attempts at ‘coping mechanisms’."
Reading the lyrics, they are short and to the point. Single words such as “Divest, disconnect, dissociate,” and “sabotage” are the sole words on some lines. Suicidal flirtation like “Failed kamikaze mission” and “No reason to wear the belt you used to hang yourself” are also found within. It is a dark slice of life for a song that does have a very bluesy underbelly.
Finite will be released by Translation Loss Records this November. Yeah, it is five months away from full release but it is never too early for more Teeth or Translation Loss. Preorder here.
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