Showing Teeth – A Fate Worse Than Loneliness Review

Musicians are all too familiar with today’s marketing landscape, a landscape that tells you that you need to post 300 TikTok videos a week otherwise, you’re going to fall into obscurity. In some cases, this works, and when it does work, the world notices. Showing Teeth is one of these success stories, and they’ve just dropped their first EP, but does the ephemerality of doomscrolling translate to actual artist success? Quite possibly.

Showing Teeth, also known simply as Addison, found success on TikTok by posting vocal cover videos in her Honda Accord. These covers included Underoath, Whitechapel, and Boundaries, showing us that this 26-year-old from Tennessee has got a set of pipes on her. What we certainly didn’t expect was that when she finally started dropping original music, it’d actually be quite good.

A Fate Worse Than Loneliness is a 7-track EP that brings together a handful of Showing Teeth’s singles, Bad Exchanges, Labyrinth, and Rip, with four new songs. With these three singles, we saw support from Periphery drummer Matt Halpern, who definitely helped elevate the overall instrumentation. Of course, producer Dan Book also had a hand in it, too, though apparently it wasn’t easy. This makes the EP definitely fall in line with modern metal production, plus having those connections definitely helped with reach.

The EP definitely nods to some of the influences we’ve seen in her TikTok videos with a mix of high squeals, fry screams, and, what surprised me the most, a pop-tinged clean voice that wouldn’t sound out of place in the Billboard top 100. It’s this where I feel Showing Teeth manages to capture an audience, one that’s chomping at the bit for new pop-tinged metalcore.

Fans of bands like President, Bad Omens, Spiritbox, and Bring Me The Horizon are eating this shit up, and for good reason: it’s heavy but also insanely catchy. That’s not to say Showing Teeth are baby’s first metal; far from it. Some of the tracks on this EP tiptoe the line of deathcore, and they truly rip. There is however, an element of accessibility outside the crushing guttural screams and heavy chugs, especially with Addison’s cleans.

As far as debut EPs go, however, A Fate Worse Than Loneliness is an exceptional bar to set for yourself. As I mentioned, we have that pop-tinged metal à la Poppy and Spiritbox; we also have Whitechapel-like deathcore, and melodic poppy metalcore with the almost-a-ballad track Paradigm. There’s a versatility present here that you don’t really often find in debut EPs, so I’m really curious as to what the future might bring in terms of a full record.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to like Showing Teeth, to be completely honest, but Addison has knocked it out of the park with this one. Influences are definitely on her sleeve with this, and I applaud that. The EP also separates itself from the pack of other pop-tinged metal, mostly with how talented Addison is with her screams that seem to have no limits. The only critique I have is with some of the vocal choices, specifically in Labyrinth, where the high squeal backs up her cleans; it kinda pulled me out of the moment. The juxtaposition of the ethereal chorus with the goblin having a screaming fit just feels a bit out of place.