"And all the dirty women love to hang around/I guess they heard about me last time I was in town…" - Broken Teeth - Guilty Pleasure
I ended up discovering Broken Teeth by accident a bit to be honest. I think it was in the early days of my discovering the near-legendary ChangesOne label around the early noughties where they were doing a "buy two EP's get a third free" offer or similar and I basically ended up picking up a split EP of theirs with the legendary Streetwalkin' Cheetahs who I think I'd heard good things about on Sleazegrinder around the time. Anyway, I remember hearing the EP which contained Devil Money, Hangin' By The Skin and Crashlanding Affair and being well and truly bowled over. There's been a lot of bands who've attempted to channel the spirit of AC/DC down the years but these guys were definitely up there as one of the best. They were ploughing a similar furrow to the one that Airbourne would mine more successfully a few years later but unlike the O'Keeffe siblings, there was no slightly suspicious hint of it being a bit too clean-cut and over-produced, this was the real beer sluggin' bar room brawlin' brass knuckle wielding deal.
Of course, the truth is a little more complicated than that. Broken Teeth were (and indeed still are) fronted by Texas native Jason McMaster, a man who'd already been in the rock 'n' roll game for well over a decade by this point starting out with prog-thrash types Watchtower (who I have to plead ignorance to I'm afraid) before moving on to his most commercially successful venture Dangerous Toys in the hair metal era. Dangerous Toys were basically a southern states Skid Row but not quite of the same quality - most of the songs were basically about booze, fighting or sex (they had a song called Sportin' A Woody which kind of tells you most of what you need to know) and McMaster had an Axl/Seb Bach style high end screech which at least marked them out a bit as did their Maiden style gimmick of having an inflatable zombie clown as their band mascot (if you've seen the classic horror B movie Killer Klowns From Outer Space, just think that basically) but compared to say the not entirely dissimilar Four Horsemen, they always seemed like a bit of a poor relation to be honest.
Dangerous Toys still managed a decent run in the early nineties with songs like Teasin' Pleasin' and Scared being minor hits and being a bit rougher and meaner than most of the competition they were lucky enough to avoid the worst effects of the grunge holocaust and were still putting out albums by the mid-'90s like Pissed which basically sounded exactly the same as the earlier stuff (to be fair, they deserve credit for not taking the easy way out of going grunge the way a lot of their contemporaries did) but as the decade wound to a close, the law of diminishing returns finally caught up with them and the band went on hiatus.
McMaster and latter day Toys guitarist Paul Lidel would move on to form Broken Teeth and I think it's fair to say that they must have been listening to a fair bit of Bon Scott era Accer-Daccer at this point as their self-titled debut was full of Angus style duck-walking riffs and bad attitude topped off with McMaster's trademark screech. But the sheer energy of the thing turns what could have been a shameless rip-off into a damn good album - the likes of She's Gonna Blow, Trippin' Over A Bone, El Diablo, Pull The Plug and their ode to the titular wrestler Undertaker practically melt your face off with their sheer riffed up ferocity and chantalong choruses. It's a great album for anyone who loves unapologetically straightforward zero-fucks-given rock 'n' roll and comes highly recommended.
The group's second album Guilty Pleasure is just as good with the likes of the title track ("But if I go down you're all comin' with me/'Cos I'll probably go to Hell just for the magazines I read!"), Devil Money and Hangin' By The Skin (with its memorable chorus of "Oh lordy what've I done?/I should've listened to me dear old Mum!") being prime headbanger material. It ain't big and it ain't clever but when it's this good, who really cares? I mean, fair to say that McMaster and Lidel really outdid themselves with these after the steady but unremarkable Dangerous Toys.
I was always hoping that Broken Teeth would make it across the Atlantic for a few UK gigs at some point but sadly it's yet to happen. I actually remember running into someone who knew McMaster while out at an Adam Ant gig at the Scala (yup, weird connection I know!) and he told me that the band had been wanting to come over to dear old Blighty for ages but had never been able to get the money together. Hopefully some day it'll happen.
Broken Teeth have continued to be a going concern for two decades now - over time, they've slowly broadened their horizons a bit and although there's definitely still an AC/DC influence to their work, you can also hear elements of Judas Priest and Paul Di'Anno era Maiden in their more recent albums like 2015's excellent Bulldozer and the Four To The Floor EP from a couple of years later. They've even paired up with Danko Jones on the title track for 2008's Viva La Rock Fantastico, another sound effort. I dunno, maybe Danko could bring 'em over next time he's on tour here? We live in hope.
Anyway, here's to Broken Teeth - proof that sometimes the best rock 'n' roll comes from being simple, dumb but with a knack with riffs, choruses and hooks that are absolutely impossible to resist chanting along to. Grab a pint of whatever your poison is, cue up those albums and prepare to bellow along as if your life depended on it if you haven't already. Good times.
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