All Teeth And Nails provides a fairly consistent glimpse into the band's felt-melting prowess, with hints of SST Records research and shoegaze acknowledgement. With nine attempts at clobbering you over the head with their sonic earthquakes, the debut also points out some very fundamental flaws before the power source to the amps was even turned on.
Primarily, lead vocalist and guitarist Matt Habeggar is about as unexciting of a vocalist that I've heard in some time, to the point where his limited vocals end up removing any lasting memory of the band's prowess. The Lee Renaldo monotone would be somewhat admirable if there was something of substance behind it. And when there isn't, it all becomes this timid bark, making even lines like "think I might take a chance and shoot a load off" sound like an afterthought tugjob. Even the double-tracked chorus merely become stuck in their own lack of excitement, demoting One Hundred Percent's lyrical themes, however lazy, to flaccid and forgettable.
Drummer Jay Fruy provides little more than a predictable backbeat, with fills that are so unimaginative that Mo Tucker sounds like Neil Peart by comparison. This is hardly the kind of tepid delivery a band should be gunning for, particularly when the entire premise of the band is the promise of their aural capabilities.
While any novice can figure out how to turn the amp volume knob up to 10, All Teeth And Nails proves that, without a formidable action plan beyond "turning it up" there's very little reason to pay attention beyond the pointless din.
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