Photo credit: Devils Teeth
Small bands don’t typically have creative departments to help with video concepting, album covers and show promos, but Milwaukee’s Devils Teeth is blessed with its own three-person team. The same three guys, however, happen to be members of the band.
Guitarist Jon Hanusa, bassist Eric Arsnow and drummer Chuck Engel all have backgrounds in professional video production and boast various creative talents in addition to music. “I’ve never been in a band that’s had that level of additional creative assets all built around a few dudes playing some rock ’n’ roll,” said Hanusa.
Devils Teeth, which released its debut album Suki Yaki Hot! in August, formed in 2016. Hanusa and Arsnow had met at work several years earlier, bonding over a mutual love for cult cinema. They soon too learned of each other’s musical passions and an idea was formed for a band combining surf rock and themes from horror and kung-fu movies.
At the time, Arsnow was in Tigernite and didn’t have time to start a second band, but when he departed the group in early 2016, Hanusa wasted no time.
“When he found out I was out of that band, he messaged me immediately,” Arsnow said.
They added Engel on drums after he participated with Arsnow in Unintimidated: Wisconsin Musicians Against Scott Walker, a project for which Engel directed video content and Arsnow edited the performances together.
The group’s fourth member, Caleb Westphal joined the band on saxophone in January this year after Devils Teeth saw his biography with the fish fry column he writes for Milwaukee Record in which he described a long-held desire to play saxophone in a rock ’n’ roll band.
Recording for Suki Yaki Hot! began last summer in Arsnow’s basement, mostly coinciding with Devils Teeth’s weekly practices. Arsnow said he has always been fascinated by DIY. recording and had a blast making the album. The band took a record-a-song-and-then-drink-a-beer-on-the-porch approach.
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“It was just like making a record with your best friends and doing it whatever way you wanted, which was super liberating,” Arsnow said. Added Engel, who also designed the album’s spooky artwork: “Recording can be a slow and arduous process at times, but we always find a way to keep things light.”
They wrapped up recording earlier this year, giving Westphal a chance to contribute to three songs, including the cool, charging “Jet Jaguar,” on which his sax is featured prominently.
Despite just releasing their debut, Devils Teeth already has enough original songs for several more albums. Arsnow credits that bounty of songs to Hanusa, who he says always has assorted narratives and character ideas playing out in his head. “The Junction Street Eight Tigers” is about Bruce Lee’s gang when he was growing up. “Diamond Rio” (for which the band created a delightfully deranged video) came about after Hanusa found a lime green tank top for the ’90s hot country act Diamond Rio in a thrift store and then imagined what it would be like to be a member of the band.
“He’ll come up with these weird things,” Arsnow said. “It actually makes the songwriting process move pretty quickly, which is why we are pretty much three albums deep at this point.”
The Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Bloodsport provided inspiration for Devils Teeth’s next album, which Hanusa described as a “spaghetti-western rock opera centered around a hyper-exaggerated version of Chong Li,” the movie’s villain.
“One day I’m going to start a band that is just dedicated to doing music for kung-fu fight scenes,” Hanusa said.
Devils Teeth’s Suki Yaki Hot! is streaming at devilsteeth.bandcamp.com. The band plays The Cooperage on Friday, Sept. 14 at 9 p.m. with The Yawpers, Tigernite and Wood Chickens.
