Retro Review: “Eating on the First Date” by Teased to a Beatdown

It’s rare to listen to a record that’s ahead of its time, yet still so severely dated. This is the dichotomy of “Eating on the First Date” by Teased to a Beatdown. It’s an album that is trapped in purgatory. Much like Tarantino films existing in an alternate universe somewhere between the ’70s and the ’90s, Teased to a Beatdown exists sometime in our hip, genre-blending musical landscape while also somehow staying firmly planted in just about every ’90s subculture cliche available.

It’s not unusual for bands to feature interesting instrumentation. Some bands use unique instruments and tone qualities as gimmicks within their genre, knowing the ear-catching qualities are great attention-grabbers. Many bands are able to accomplish the goal of getting people’s attention while also fusing different genres, textures, and ideas together into something brand-new. Jethro Tull is a great example: a group that used the flute heavily within a rock context and created something greater than the sum of its parts. However, only the first half of “Eating on the First Date” did something fresh by featuring the saxophone as the main melodic instrument within a hard-rock/punk context. The rest of the album becomes repetitive very quickly.

While I’m an advocate for interesting music mashups, and I love the initial sonic ideas and combinations this record offers, it seems as though merely the framework of the record is what makes it unique, not high-quality songwriting or memorable arrangement.

The production of this record is good. Nothing is unlistenable from a tonal perspective. In fact, bassist Jeffery Nash brings a wall of excellent, saturated, fuzzy and punk bass tones to this record, and the drums sound fat and aggressive, while retaining a very acoustic and open quality throughout the record. Even the saxophone sits well in the mix, if being a bit out of tune at times and inexpressive through most of the record.

The parts of production that heavily date this record include random rap breaks, record scratches, the sometimes ska-like quality of horns over rock music, and especially the audio samples relating to stoner culture, pornography, and other deviant activities. This specifically is reminiscent of Sublime sampling porn and other audio-bites in songs like “Smoke Two Joints,” “Ball and Chain/5446,” and others. Sampling is a cool thing to do in moderation, and the samples they chose did make me laugh the first few times. However, as the album wore on and they chose to use explicit samples in front of every single song, it started to feel more like edgy cries for attention than something nuanced and interesting.

On some tracks, Teased to a Beatdown does combine some interesting genres, like on the second track “Buildup.” This track includes some almost dub-like delay effects on saxophone which give the song a great vibe, and it sounds like the love child of a 1950s gangster soundtrack and a Korn single.

On the very rare occasions when vocals appear, they are always rapped and always sound sort of like the Beastie Boys. Unfortunately, any and all of the lyrics are indiscernible, so you just have to embrace the harsh vibe of it and accept it.

All in all, I think this record brought some cool things to the table but falls flat by the end. My biggest beef with it is the potential that went untapped. Teased to a Beatdown could have really expanded on the idea of sax in this context instead of treating it as a replacement for the guitar. They could have filled out their mixes with more vocals that could have set the aggressive tone for more of the record. They definitely could have done a lot more with production to keep the record interesting for a longer span of time.

I didn’t hate this record; in fact, it did something for the small part of me that still loves ska and assorted ’90s-style stoner music. But I would have liked to have heard more development from it overall. Next time, cut it down to the five best tracks and sell the EP.