:: Pulling Teeth - Martyr Immortal

Pulling Teeth

When a group boasts former members of Slumlords, The Spark, Desperate Measures and Never Enough, you know you’re going to get something ugly, aggressive and downright intense. And sure enough, those very words describe Baltimore based Pulling Teeth’s latest effort. Having formed in 2005, the five piece act quickly stablished a following with their Chainsaw Safety Records debut effort ‘Vicious Skin’ in late 2006. Eager to keep the momentum going, the band soon released a split EP with U.K. act Frightener before signing up with the mighty Deathwish Music for their latest effort ‘Martyr Immortal’. If you can imagine a cross between Integrity, Ringworm and Slayer, then you’ll have some idea of what to expect from Pulling Teeth. From out of a wall of feedback, the band takes anything within grasp right by the throat with the opening blast of ‘With Avarice’. At barely a minute and a half long, it’s obvious that Pulling Teeth aren’t about to waste a single moment on unnecessary extras or niceties. They also maintain the intensity levels of the album to a maximum, with barely a split second separating ‘Dead Is Dead’, the somewhat slower and more melodically based ‘Clipped Wings’ and the sheer brilliance of ‘Shiteaters’.

The three tracks from their last EP (‘Stonethrowers’, ‘Sick And Tired’ and ‘Basically Dead’) once again make a reappearance here to make up for the sheer speed and brevity of tracks such ‘Rains’ and ‘Ashes And Dust’. But what makes this album really interesting is the experimentation that shows near the tail end of the album. Both ‘Black Skies’ and ‘Martyr Immortal’ see the band slowing things down to emphasise the crushing heaviness they can deliver. Meanwhile, the album is closed with the expansive and disturbing ‘Dismissed In Time’, which is primarily a twisted sonic soundscape with passages of spoken word. Pulling Teeth’s ‘Martyr Immortal’ is bitter, violent and downright chaotic to its very core, which is everything metallic hardcore should be.