In no time at all, the Los Angeles group 3Teeth seem to be the industrial band name on everybody’s lips. Their music is grabbing attention with their own brand of hard industrial dance floor aggression, jagged beats, and plenty of hard bass. Rivetheads Radio have joined the ever growing list of convertees so John E Smoke had to track them down and ‘extract’ (see what we dfid there?) some key information…. 
Thank you for talking to Rivetheads, First of all, I think we need to establish exactly why there are only 3 teeth. Who’s teeth are they and can they still eat pizza?
There’s an ancient form of divination known as odontomancy that involves the use of 3 teeth. The 3 teeth that you see in the image were actually pulled from a real human skull that was a hand-me-down gift from Adam Jones of TOOL. As far as who the skull belongs too… Well, that remains a mystery and whether or not those teeth can still eat pizza even more so.
Few bands recently have commanded this much attention from the ‘scene’. Your music frequently gets requested on the show, and this is before your debut album has come out and before the band have hit the stage. I would certainly agree that you are deserving of such attention but what do you think has made you stand out from the crowd?
In the past 8 months we’ve really put a lot of care into the evolving entity that is 3 TEETH. Whether it be the sound, the message, or the visual identity, we always make sure that there is a cohesive vision and that the dots can be connected in the details. The 4 of us love creating layers of meaning that can peeled away like an onion as we think its creates a some lateral thinking with people .
Your name is often displayed in a type of font that makes the band rather hard to search for on the old interweb, and also does weird things in my DJ playlist. Is this an intentional move to remain an enigma? Tell us more about the presentation of the band name.
First off, we only use that zalgo text on Facebook as it’s actually a statement about optical character recognition otherwise known as OCR. For those of you who don’t know what OCR is; it’s a field of research in pattern recognition and computer vision used by the government and corporations to invade your personal cyber space and collect information about you. It’s essentially an algorithm that mines your personal data based on the text characters and at its most innocent is typically used to sell you shit based on your online social patterns. So we sorry about fucking up your DJ playlist and fortunately the album mp3s will not be encoded with the Zalgo cyber camouflage.
Your debut album is soon to be released on Artoffact Records, including an awesome splatter vinyl and USB tooth package. Who’s idea was that? Do you have a preferred format for releasing your music? Any other unique packaging ideas up your sleeve?
I’m not sure we have a preferred format but we all love coming up with different ideas on how to package our sound to keep things interesting. No idea on what comes next but rest assured we’ll continue to one-up ourselves.
I saw a picture from the 3Teeth stable with an advert for rectal listening ‘rear buds’. Have you tested the prototypes? What about ‘head’ phones for the ultimate male listening experience?
We haven’t had a chance to test the rear buds yet but I believe the original prototypes were developed by a Blackberry subsidiary known as Brownberry. Apparently they had big plans to displace iPod sale but I guess they had to close up shop because kids were getting pink eye or something.
When discussing your music, ‘old school industrial’ is a phrase often mentioned. What does the term ‘industrial’ mean to you in a music context? If you had to coin a phrase to describe your sound to the uninitiated, what would it be?
To us industrial music is a transgressive art form that should feel like hydraulic fracturing in your pineal gland. That being said, were not really big on musical genres as a whole, but to answer you question about our sound, were going to have to go with “Post Industrial Guerrilla Ontology”
What are your favourite ‘old school industrial’ releases? And what about ‘new school industrial’?
Skinny Puppy ‘Aint it Dead Yet?’ and Ministry “The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste” for older stuff and as for new school stuff…. Author & Punisher “Drone Machines”.
Can you remember what the first record/CD was that you bought with your own money? What about the most recent purchase? Tell us something about these.
Nitzer Ebb ‘That Total Age’ cassette. Best $1 ever spent.
OK, geek talk time. Tell us a little about your music writting and recording set up. Do you have any key pieces of hardware of software that you wouldn’t want to be without?
The most essential equipment is our HS80 monitors, our SM58 microphone and the Prophet. Everything else is interchangeable.
When the band pop their gig cherries what can we expect from your shows? It strikes me that your music would lend itself to including an audio/visual element, anything planned?
Two words: Media Bombardment
Who would you most like to share the stage with when you do hit the road?
No idea.
Thanks again for having a chin wag with us here at Rivetheads HQ. Is there anything you’d like to add? Have you heard any good/bad jokes lately?
Just that we’d like to thank everyone for the initial support they’ve given us and that we certainly don’t take anything for granted.
Oh and have you heard the one about the constipated mathematician ?
… He worked it out with a pencil.
