Their Teeth Will Be of Lions - "The Color By Numbers! Demo 07"

Their Teeth Will Be of Lions - An Anxious Night Minus Television (Veritas et Aequitas Records 2007)

Their Teeth Will Be of Lions - The Color By Numbers! Demo 07 / Veritas Et Aequitas

For all of the stigma that comes with being well-informed about music (Just ask anyone at my office who's tried to talk with me about music beyond, "Oh, so you listen to, like, rock and hip-hop?"), it does afford you the nice opportunity of connecting with smaller artists on a more personal level. Their Teeth Will Be of Lions now fall under this category. The Michigan act was kind enough to play a ChIRP benefit on April 4th and lead singer Glenn Michael Willis enthusiastically handed over a copy of this three-copy EP. The poor guy had no idea that my night was about to take a dramatic turn for the worse, but that's another story; what's important here is that Their Teeth Will Be of Lions are a promising group going in all sorts of directions, each of them wild with possibility. Kalamazoo funcore? It exists. Here's some proof.

The sextet run through a multitude of styles in just three songs here (though this demo has aged somewhat, the band recently signed to Veritas et Aequitas Records and released a fresh EP with a neat retro cover in Everyone Made it Out Alive... Almost!), but the keyword is energy. This band has buckets full. "It's a lot like watching monkeys. We're random and unpredictable," guitarist Derek Feltner has said. I've watched them, and I've watched monkeys. I don't mean to be a hater here, but monkeys are much less interesting.

The vocals are split between Willis and female foil Jenn Hampshire. Neither are afraid to croon, and they can do so competently, but aside from the astonishing amount of time signature changes packed into the demo's 11 minutes, the real fun is in the erratic yelping that really brings these songs alive. Though they mention Chicago's own Hyper Viper!, I wonder how much the band collectively loves the Northwest's scene between 2001 and 2004...? There are reminders of early Pretty Girls Make Graves, The Gossip, Soiled Doves, and the more melodic moments of The Blood Brothers. Obvious reference points maybe, but why not throw in East Coasters Les Savy Fav to complete the picture? That should be enough namedropping to get the idea. The trick is that this band is just as clever and almost as technically adept as any of the aforementioned.

If you're looking for a flaw (and if you're doing that, well, what happened to 2KGreat? What about that?), it's that this endless exuberance can exhaust the ears over the course of a full-length. Easy for three songs, perfectly suited for a live audience, but a dozen tracks and you'll need a breather. Given that they're six people and the band (which has already run through numerous line-up changes) has only been together for, what, 13 months?, it's understandable that they would be brimming with so many ideas they run out of space and time to put them.

The future of Their Teeth Will be of Lions is unclear. For now, it's all about enjoying the rock n' roll ride, saving up some cash for Hampshire (whose apartment recently burned to the ground no thanks to a kitchen fire), getting out, playing shows, meeting the people. I haven't heard the entirety of the full-length yet, but my guess is that they've already found the solution to an unasked question this EP proposes.

Q: What's the best way to fuck with people when you've already established such a demanding sound?
A: Don't fuck with them at all.

Anyway, think about it.