It’s lights out at the Metro in Chicago. The stage is bathed in black while the crowd buzzes, waiting in anticipation for the next moment. The music gradually gets louder prompting the crowd to start cheering and applauding. Alexis Mincolla growls “Life to life/waste to waste/I’m harbinger/the master of decay” and the crowd goes wild slamming and moshing against one another. The reaction is so visceral, it’s hard to believe the crowd wasn’t sure what to make of 3Teeth just ten minutes before.

3Teeth’s set is shorter than usual – they’re playing as support for Ghostemane’s headlining tour – but 30 minutes is all they need to cause chaos. The band unleashes their fury on the unsuspecting crowd. Opening with “Divine Weapon” the band commands the tiny space cluttered with the amps and instruments of the remaining acts. They thrash and rage through “EXXIT,” “American Landfill,” and “Affluenza” from their latest album Metawar as well as “Pit of Fire” and “Tabula Umbra” from their second album, <shutdown.exe>.

Mincolla, 3Teeth’s frontman, is an intimidating force on stage. Decked out in leather, a sneer, and dark glasses he dominates the cramped stage, yet is mesmerizing with his hypnotic dancing. The band attacks their instruments with such fervor and passion their energy bleeds off stage and infects the crowd. They end their set with “Master of Decay,” leaving the crowd wanting more and making new 3Teeth fans in the process.

Since the release of their 2014 debut album, 3Teeth has been one of rock’s most talked about acts. Their intense, hard driving sound not only caught the attention of critics and fans but of big name acts like Tool and Rammstein, who they’ve toured with. They’ve achieved great success over the past few years, but as Mincolla reveals, they’re not ready to rest on their laurels. Rather, they want to keep pushing musical boundaries, challenge themselves, and remain grateful for everything they’ve accomplished so far.

Backstage at the Metro, Mincolla chats with GENRE IS DEAD! about the influence of industrial music, breaking genre rules, and not living up to expectations.

GENRE IS DEAD!: 3Teeth is currently supporting Ghostemane and the lineup is pretty eclectic. There’s hip hop, hardcore, punk, and industrial acts on the bill. How did you come to be a part of this tour?

Alexis Mincolla: Me and Ghostemane have been kind of talking through DMs, you know? There’s a mutual respect and there’s a little bit of rapport there, so he invited us up. He was like “dude I love 3Teeth” and I got into his music and it sort of worked out. It’s so funny how it’s as simple as that. We just slid into each other’s DMs.

GID: Though most of the crowd was there for Ghostemane, you still got a good response from them. By the third song, they were ready to tear shit up.

AM: Yeah! It was cool. I just wish we had more time. Thankfully we do tomorrow (Nov. 6). It’s direct support just two bands at that point. It’s good to have more time because we had a big set planned out and then we got here it was like oh half hour? Fuck, what are we cutting out? We just winged it. We actually just changed our entire live setup for this tour.

GID: I was hoping for President X to make an appearance.

AM: I can’t do that with a 30 minute set because of the changeover itself! So, we’re actually gonna do that tomorrow because we have this sort of interlude after “Master of Decay.” It’ll give me time to do my transformation. There’s definitely a plan for that because I think this crowd will love it. There’s a lot of fun masks and showmanship happening up on that stage right now. It’s funny too because the girl who made the President X mask actually made a lot of [Ghostemane’s] masks. Shout to Laney Chantal, she’s awesome.

GID: Metawar is your third album and it stands out from your other albums because you guys do some different things here, like incorporating more melodies and having some slower-paced songs. Yet, the whole album is still very mean and heavy. What was the inspiration behind going in a different direction?

AM: One of the things that separates this record from the others is we wrote this record in a room together as a band. To me, the album sounds like that. We also wrote this record for live [shows]. Everything had to be a banger. Let’s write some stuff that we can fill into our catalog – more festival slammers and bangers to get the crowd moving and stuff like that. So there’s more groove metal in it, there’s more of that dirty word nu-metal and stuff like that in it. Also, I just wanted to try something different. I don’t want to write the same record. The next record will have traces of the other three records, but I don’t want to do what anyone’s expecting. So we just tried some different stuff and we had a lot of fun doing it.

GID: It’s a great album and the new stuff you guys do it on really works. I just love the different feel and vibe there is to this record.

AM: I also think a lot of the inspiration is having been fortunate enough to play some really big spaces and arenas with acts like Rammstein. You’re constantly thinking “what are we gonna play in front of 50,000 people?” You sort of end up trying to write some songs that can fill those spaces, so we wanted to write big sounding songs.

GID: Well, you guys did a great job. The record is awesome. Looking at who you’ve collaborated and toured with in the past, such as Ho99o9 and now Ghostemane, it seems like you guys have an affinity and respect for hip hop, which not everyone would expect for a band like 3Teeth.

AM: Totally, which is funny because I don’t know if it’s really a respect for hip hop as much as it is a respect for people who are carving their own lane. I think one of the things that united us and Ho99o9 is how it was two bands that really didn’t fit anywhere. We’re not metal enough for the metal kids, we’re not industrial enough for the industrial kids. A lot of that could be said for Ghostemane and Ho99o9 also. So, I just respect people who are doing their own fucking thing.

GID: Does hip hop influence your work at all?

AM: It doesn’t, but I think it should! I’m just really hesitant about doing things that don’t feel genuine to me. I don’t want to come across as some sort of dilatant whose like “oh that’s cool let me try that now.” For me, it would have to be born out of a place of collaboration and working on something where they would bring that component to it. I just don’t want to come across as a culture vulture because it’s not my style. I write the music I grew up on. It feels like something I want to listen to, not to say I don’t like hip hop. I like listening to it now. It’s growing on me and I’m being informed by friends about certain aspects of things, but it’s not me. Collaboration? Absolutely.

GID: The collaboration you guys did with Ho99o9 was awesome.

AM: Yeah, we did that in like days too. We got in the studio and we just clicked. It was like hey let’s try this and the flow was awesome. We could write a record together in like a week or so. I think we should do more with them. Those dudes are like family. We shared a tour bus together and when you share a tour bus with someone it’s like at that point you become family.

GID: It seems like these days there’s more cohesion between rap and rock, which is great because there are some excellent artists in both genres even though there are still people out there who want to pit the two against each other.

AM: I’ll never forget watching Public Enemy and Anthrax drop that “Bring the Noise” video as a kid. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world because I was such an Anthrax fan and I loved the aesthetic of Public Enemy and what they were doing and what they meant politically. To me, that was such a cool combination, such a cool marriage. It wasn’t like Machine Head doing their rap-rock phase. It was these two components that came together, these two chemicals that had a chemical reaction and created a new chemical. So if I were to ever do that it would be along those lines.

GID: I’d love to hear that! So, 3Teeth is a very visual band and the images featured in your art and videos are intense. You guys aren’t afraid of pushing people’s boundaries to the point where it may make them uncomfortable. When it comes to images and videos like “EXXIT,” is it your intent to leave people with something that will unsettle them?

AM: There’s always that aged old cliché that good art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. For me, a lot of what we do is a reflection of various societal issues. It’s horrific but not anymore horrific than the fucking 10 o’clock news. There’s so much horrific shit going on right now but to us, there’s an intention behind everything we do, especially the visual imagery. My background was visual arts, so I’m kind of the eyes of the band. But for me, everything we do is there to allow you to digest and ingest a lot of that density and to take away pieces and layers of that. It’s not fire for effect. It’s not like shock rock where it’s like hey let’s just make it scary and fucked up. For us, it’s like let’s do it because it means something. I don’t find it horrific, but I guess if you made a horror movie you wouldn’t be scared of it because you made it. I can see how it comes off as unsettling to people, especially that “EXXIT” video. That’s probably hard to watch.

GID: It is a tough one to sit through! But it does leave a lasting impression on you – it’s something you won’t forget. It reminds me of watching Requiem for a Dream for the first time. It’s an excellent movie, but I never want to see it again.

AM: Of course, that’s like the movie Hereditary. That movie fucked me up for like two weeks. And it was so funny because I didn’t really like that movie. My buddy asked me why not and I said because it fucked me up. He said that means it’s a good movie and I was like I guess it is. It just felt really fucked up! That’s good art! It had an effect on me. That movie just held the grief note – the grief note is perpetual. I don’t want to hear these women wailing for hours. It was awful. Really fucked up. I wouldn’t watch it again, but I’m glad I watched it. It’s the experience.

GID: You guys have played Chicago numerous times now – I actually saw you guys earlier this year with GoSt and Author and Punisher. When you have free time, what do you like to do in the city?

AM: I went out last night and we went to a place called Bites that had this little bar next to it and caught a bit of an underground show and then went to this Sportsman’s bar. We bombed around, ate good food, and had a couple of drinks. It has a good bar culture, a place where you can bounce around some cool spots and I just like the vibe here. People are really nice here. It’s like Metropolitan with mid-western sensibilities.

GID: By now you’re familiar with the different venues the city has to offer. Do you have a favorite venue?

AM: I love Reggie’s [Rock Club]. We’ve played there so much and it’s just a fun, nasty, dingy awesome space. I think [the Metro] is a great venue too, but Reggie’s definitely. It’s our home. We know all the crew there now and they have awesome Airbnbs directly above it, so they take care of us and we get to stay right there. They also have an awesome restaurant – it’s like an institution. The whole thing is like a self-contained awesome space. It’s cool. Reggie’s for sure.

GID: Looking at music trends, it seems like industrial music is having a resurgence of sorts. Bands like 3Teeth, Author and Punisher, and Youth Code are bringing it to the forefront and making people take notice again.

AM: I see it sonically having a resurgence more than the scene. Yeah, there are some bands that are getting more popular, like the ones you mentioned, but I think sonically, you’re seeing it represented tremendously. You’re seeing it represented in some of Ghostemane’s music, you’re seeing it represented in a lot of pop music, the Yeezus record feels like an industrial record. You’re seeing it represented in sound design for movies, you’re seeing it come to the forefront in video games. Industrial music is driven by technology which allows it to be continually reinvented. What the fuck is industrial music in the first place?

It’s such an experimental genre. You’re not held back by gatekeepers, which is another reason I wanted to make more of an industrial project. I love metal, but metal is very much you gotta have your glass beats, you gotta have your cookie monsters vocals, you gotta have this – I just don’t wanna deal with that. With an industrial project, no one’s gonna give a shit because there’s no real definition of industrial. So you can do whatever you want. Obviously, we’re very reverent of the genre and the history, but it’s also – Ghostemane has a shirt that says death metal purist. I love that. It’s like fuck purists. People are like are 3teeth even industrial anymore? I’m like who cares? I don’t call myself industrial. You guys call me industrial. Fucking Spotify me into a fucking description. I dunno I just make songs I wanna hear.

GID: Why do you think now in particular industrial is having a sonic resurgence?

AM: Because you’re seeing the advent and the popularity of electronic music in general. Technology is driving innovation in music in a lot of ways as well. The very venture of creating music is a little bit lower and you have so much in the box computer-based music now that lends itself to industrial music fairly well. I think that you’re seeing amalgamations of things like hip hop getting industrial and metal getting industrial, like the new Code Orange is modular synths and stuff like that. It’s a hardcore band and I know people think a metal band that uses synths doesn’t make them industrial. Yeah, but it makes them industrial inspired, so I think you’re seeing more of that.

People are trying to push boundaries. Every guitar riff has already been played, every drumbeat has already been played. You have an acoustic kit, you have the bass guitar, and guitarist – not to say it’s limiting, but a lot of that’s been done. So where is the creative space? Where is the territory that allows for innovation? You’re gonna get a lot more sort of industrialized, electronic, experimentation to push that and I think that’s the natural path of where we are right now. Not to mention as we lean stereotypically closer to a dystopian existence the soundtrack seems to manifest with it.

GID: Metawar features an excellent cover of Foster the People’s “Pumped up Kicks,” which brings out the disturbing nature of the song. What another song you’d like to cover and highlight the darkness lurking underneath?

AM: It’s funny because we thought about that for a while. What’s a song that people would never expect us to cover, that’s a super big song, but not from too long ago? But it would hit in this way that if we gave it a genetically modified sort of cover it would bring out the darkness of it and that was immediately the perfect song. We thought about a lot of other ones but they just didn’t hit the sweet spot. “Everybody wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears would be a great song and very appropriate, but everyone loves Tears for Fears. I want to pick a song that I didn’t even like and see if we can cover it.

By the way, we just did two other cover songs for a Daniel Radcliffe movie that’s coming out. I haven’t announced what the covers are, but there are covers that you would never fucking expect and we gave them that 3Teeth re-rubbing and they came out fucking awesome. It’s so weird because I hated the idea of doing a cover song. And now I kind of love it. It’s fun. It’s fun not having to write a song and just sort of interpret it instead. All that burden of everything has to mean something – it’s like this is already a great song, let’s see if we can fuck it up. We had fun with “Pumped Up Kicks” too. I was like is this gonna be cool? Who cares let’s just try it. And then we tried it and it was like holy shit it actually came out cool. I was so ready to 86 it. I was like we’ll try it. We’ll get into the first chorus and if it sucks, not doing it. And it was like damn that thing rips!

GID: It’s an awesome cover! I love finding metal covers of pop songs, like Children of Bodom covering Britany Spears.

AM: Yeah! Everyone was like dude, cover an industrial song. I’m not covering an industrial song. We’re an industrial band. It just felt so masturbatory. I already like that song, why would I cover it? I want to cover a song I don’t like that I don’t listen to it and turn it into something I would listen to. That to me is the impetus for covering songs. It’s not tainting a version of a song I love. That feels disrespectful. I don’t do karaoke for that reason either. Fuck that shit.

GID: It’s been a pretty crazy ride for the band ever since the release of your first album. You’ve toured with major acts, gotten all this well-deserved praise, and have really made a buzz in the metal scene. For some bands, it seems easy for them to get overwhelmed or lose sight of what they were trying to do in the first place. How do you deal with the craziness of the past few years?

AM: I think it’s good to have a good support system, people who are in your corner. [Tool guitarist] Adam Jones, for example, is sort of a mentor. Those dudes from Tool are just humble guys. In the grand scheme things, we’re not shit. We’ve barely made a mark on the face of the dragon. There’s so much more territory to explore. For me, there’s no place for the ego. I think on stage it’s okay, I think people want that. But we’re just fortunate to be doing what we love and not have shitty day jobs and allowing us to continue to do what we love. If people want to give us more resources to do that, we should be infinitely grateful. I think having gratitude is a good way to stay bound to that respect. So, a good support system and not being a dick.

GID: The passion you guys have for playing definitely comes across on stage. Your energy is infectious. One thing I really love about 3Teeth is how you’re not afraid to move on stage. You guys really get into it and you’re dancing is so mesmerizing!

AM: Yeah, even when we don’t have space like tonight, we make space. I always say if I’m thinking about something on stage, I’m not performing. I just want to get lost. One of my favorite things about performance is that sense of getting off stage and thinking “what even happened up there?” I don’t even remember. I just want to be conscious and present. I need that to be my fugue state. Just disappearing and occasionally realizing there’s a crowd, but that doesn’t even bother me. I’ll put on the same show for 200 people as I do for 20,000. We just have fun. It’s the coolest job in the world. I want to be fucking grateful of it and just keep doing it.

3Teeth’s third album, Metawar, is available now. The band recently wrapped up their outing with Ghostemane. Next year, they’ll embark on their European/UK headlining tour. Find all their dates here.