Pulling Teeth

Baltimore, MA's Pulling Teeth haven't reinvented their sound but the difference between their last two albums is substantial. Martyr Immortal, for the most part, was a very straightforward, thrash-y hardcore album, while Paranoid Delusions / Paradise Illusions differs in scope and rhythm. The most bizarre thing is certainly the fact that the average song length is almost three minutes and this five-track album has a near-ten-minute conclusion track. When it comes to hardcore the fast, short and explosive standard is what we expect, but everyone will be taken back by Pulling Teeth's alteration to this conventional approach. Opener "Ritual" does a sludgy belly crawl for nearly two minutes before the band explode with a blistering amount of guitar shredding and snare drum abuse, while "Unsatisfied" slows the movement of this album substantially before "Bloodwolves" returns to Pulling Teeth's all-out attack style of hardcore. Paranoid Delusions is definitely a solid album and should be given a good amount of spin time before any haters judge Pulling Teeth for trying to breathe some life into their sound.