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LA based industrial metal outfit, 3Teeth, have just released their third album, ‘Metawar’. After an issue at UK border control which led to them pulling their gig in Bristol, the band finally made it to Glasgow to open for industrial legends Ministry. After their set, I grabbed guitarist Chase Brawner for a chat. Only one place to start the conversation.
What happened at the border?!
“I can’t really talk about it! It was a fucked thing, we went by the rules of the UK government, we had to go to another country and come back in, to get allowed in the proper way”
You were coming in via Berlin I believe?
“Berlin, yeah, something happened then we had to go back out to France, come back in and we didn’t get to Bristol about 3am, which meant we had to cancel the gig. We never do that, but it’s all good now, we have the proper shit!”
Even missing just one gig costs you, lost merchandise sales etc.
“It sucks, it’s expensive to tour and sometimes you are spending more money than you make, but we are not in it for the money”.
Sure, but you’ve got to eat though!
“Yep, we’ve got to eat! But we want to spread the seed of music, of strong content, proper music”.
Berlin was the first gig on this run with Ministry, how was it?
“My god it was insane, we had flights totalling 14 hours, we had a delay and got into the venue late afternoon. Quick soundcheck with no sleep, and I don’t know what the fuck was going on with Berlin, but it was over 100 degrees there! The venue didn’t have any AC and it was like 113 degrees onstage! We had to trim the set by a song or two just because it was so hot, but it was all good, it was a fun show”.
For any industrial band like yourself it must be surreal touring with Al Jourgensen and Ministry?
“Al is the fucking godfather of industrial music! We think he is the king of samples, when I first heard industrial, that’s what I was listening to, the samples. Then I got more into EDM and Nitzer Ebb, then poppier stuff like Depeche Mode, New Order. Lex (Alexis Mincolla, 3Teeth vocalist) and Al did an interview together for Revolver and I guess that went really well and they got on. The rest of the band, we all met Al for the first time at the Berlin show, and great dude, welcomed us with open arms, it’s a cool experience and hopefully we can take the tour to the US. We go well together, like us and Rammstein, it’s the dudes that did this shit 25 years ago”.
And still doing it, without losing any integrity.
“And still doing it yeah, totally, the last Ministry album was incredible, and they are killing it in there. I know Lex really listened to Ministry growing up, I got into it late, I was more into like Pantera, big riffs, less sample-based”.
‘Metawar’ is the new album, there is a lot of anger on the album, is this the album that 3Teeth had to make in 2019?
“Oh of course, we wrote a lot of demos before we went out on tour, and the stuff that we had written before we went out on tour was a little bit more on the softer side, then we got back and we were like…what the fuck! We can’t play this shit live! Are we going to go play Download or something similar with this! So we scrapped a lot of the early demos and rewrote a lot, so it took a lot longer than expected, we finally turned it in and we are all very happy with it. It has got some softer stuff, there are a few tracks where I actually have some clean guitars for once! I’ve never had a clean guitar, I don’t even know how to play acoustic!”
Still a lot of hooks there though.
“Totally, you’ve got to have hooks, we like to listen to music that’s enjoyable, I’ll listen to Skinny Puppy if I’m in that certain kind of mood but I really love Depeche Mode and anything Martin Gore writes”.
Although these troubled times should be ripe for protest and anger, there seems to be more apathy in music today. But not on ‘Metawar’?
“Yeah, I know Lex has a degree in politics and knows what’s going on in the world, it’s super-fucked up, so he puts the lyrics out to suit that. We got a feeling that we had to write some more banging, uptempo stuff, but still have electronics in there. You hear the same riffs over and over again, since Nu-Metal and all that shit, everyone is just copying Sabbath really and for us it was like how can we layer that? What can we do with electronics, what can we do with a voice processor?”
How do you feel in the run up to an album release, do you still get nervous?
“You know, we wrote what we wanted to write, and we were happy with it. We were happy with the last two albums as well, but with this one we went all in on the production. We are very happy with the final product”.
Is this the first 3Teeth album that is not self-produced?
“Yes, both of the others were self-produced. Sean Beavan mixed the last album and on this album he produced, helped a lot with the vocals, in finding some vocal melodies and patterns for Lex to do. He helped with some of the song-writing, some of the demos he hardly changed, I re-tracked some of my guitars with him. He’s super organised, you need someone at the helm who is super organised. We might self-produce the next record, we already know what needs to be down for the next one, but we still might work with someone again, maybe Sean, or someone else. But he’s awesome, he did NIN, Manson, all that shit”.
‘Metawar’ is such a visual concept, the cover art, the video’s released from it, the way it looks on vinyl. Was this important from the offset?
“Of course, that was Lex spearheading it with some other dudes. A couple of guys in Germany, a couple in Russia, they all worked together for months to get that concept, and they got it fucking perfect. We want to take pride in that stuff, there is the music, but there’s also the artwork and the concept, and all the shit that’s behind the lyrics”.
You cover ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ from Foster The People on ‘Metawar’, and totally pull the rug out from under the listeners feet!
“We were pulling from a few different outlets for what to cover on the album. We are still going to do a Tears For Fears cover at some point, but their music is really complicated and we’ve got to do that right to make it sound better than the original. That’s why you do a cover, you want to make it sound better than the original. With ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ we wanted to slow it down a bit, the original song, I mean, Mark Foster is a fucking brilliant songwriter, he’s got great lyrics. We didn’t want to go back to the ‘80’s for this one, we wanted something from the 2000’s. We kicked this one around on the group thread, and it was…let’s do it, kick some synths in there, add the guitars, then we demoed it, we all added our two cents to it”.
It ends the album perfectly in all honesty.
“Oh yeah for sure, that’s what we wanted, we wanted to add some new parts, new melodies, drag the last chorus out, make it super epic, there are so many layers in that last chorus, layers of feedback loops, synths, vocal layers. It’s haunting”.
You’ve spoken about your love of British acts like Depeche Mode and New Order, did you catch the footage of The Cure at Glastonbury?
“No we didn’t, I watched some of it on YouTube and it was awesome. We ‘re friends with Adam from Tool, he was there, so he was putting it on instagram from side-stage, and it sounded so fucking good”.
Cheers Chase and thanks for your time, enjoy the rest of the tour and hopefully it’s trouble-free!
3Teeth tour dates available here.
Interview – Dave
