Album review: 3TEETH – EndEx

EndEx is an album with bite, even if it takes a moment to successfully grip the listener. To wit, opening track Xenogenesis isn’t the best representation of LA insudtrialists 3TEETH's sound. Dense to the point of impenetrability, you can just about make out interesting ideas struggling to be heard, before they’re drowned in a vat of excessive sonics. Acme Death Machine is just the ticket, though, a more streamlined by no less urgent and incessant assault. From then, things hit their stride in terms of pace and consistency, with the screeching What’s Left and the grinding ALI3N.

Given 3TEETH’s predilection for twisted noise, their collaboration with punk rappers Ho99o9, Paralyze, doesn’t come as a massive surprise – excellent though it is. A cover of the Tears For Fears' classic Everybody Wants To Rule The World, however, may turn the heads of new listeners, but this band has previous in this area, having tackled Pumped Up Kicks by indie pop outfit Foster The People on their last album, 2019’s Metawar.

This is a superior reimagining, though. The original version of Everybody Wants To Rule The World was released in 1985, the greedy era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, a woman who famously said there was no such thing as society. This reimagining brims with menace, retooling it for the age of AI, identity theft and elections plagued by interference.

EndEx doesn’t win many points for going where no band has gone before. The album, and its creators, do deserve credit for continuing the Fear Factory tradition, as an industrial metal band preoccupied with questions of how technological advancements adversely affect our lives. If you fear the future, this is the soundtrack for you.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Fear Factory, Orgy, Ho99o9

EndEx is released on September 22 via Century Media