TEETH OF THE SEA
HEAD OF STEAM, NEWCASTLE (14.11.15)
Despite being immersed in their new Highly Deadly Black Tarantula album for a few weeks now, and despite having seen Teeth of The Sea play blinding gigs in the past, tonight’s set was a revelation. Nobody is doing what they’re doing right now: their mix of electronic flourishes and staccato beats, intense churning industrial bottom end, sheets of metal guitar and Miles Davis/Morricone trumpet peals shouldn’t work but does, brilliantly. It’s always a joy to see a band hit their stride like this, the disparate styles of their previous albums coming together perfectly, and Mat Colgate’s jubilant air punches suggested they were feeling it too. This is post-everything music, a psych-prog-noise explosion that is in your face and groovy as hell all at once (there were bearded doomheads dancing at this gig who I’d long assumed had a clause in their contract with Satan forbidding such nonsense, such is the infectiousness of TOTS’ rhythms). Something about the way Sam’s trumpet rises above the maelstrom hits you right in the feels and made me wonder if that’s their secret ingredient, such an unusual sound in this kind of context and all the lovelier for it. A typical – and typically frustrating – early curfew (for DJs or somesuch) robbed us of what would surely have been a magnificent encore with Responder but you’d have to be a lunatic to feel short-changed after what preceded it. A truly special night and everybody there knew it.
Read the full review here: Narc
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