Review Summary: Bearing fangs.
Showing Teeth, the moniker of vocalist ADDISON (that’s right, even our stage names have stage names) may only have one EP to its name, but the project has already been turning quite a few heads in the metal/hardcore scene. ADDISON initially gained attention through her Instagram and TikTok videos that put her powerful screaming ability on display. Now, as Showing Teeth, she has released
A Fate Worse Than Loneliness: a well-constructed blend of hardcore and metalcore with sprinkles of hard rock. One of
A Fate Worse Than Loneliness’s finest qualities is ADDISON’s top-tier vocal performance. Simply put, the woman can do it all: high-pitched shrieks, growls, and melodic clean vocals.
Labyrinth (which happens to have been her breakout hit) is a prime example of all these different vocal styles coming together. The track begins with a feral shriek that immediately draws the listener in before transitioning into its angelic chorus. It was also a relief to hear that
A Fate Worse Than Loneliness isn’t just a display for ADDISON’s noteworthy vocals, and that the instrumentals were often just as captivating. Opening track
Bad Exchanges has completely unhinged blast beat drumming, and
Make It Out has a satisfying and well-executed lead riff, as well as a welcome guitar solo. The breakdowns to close out
Shallow Grave and
Bad Exchanges are absolutely crushing and make me wish the EP featured more of them. Then again, perhaps
A Fate Worse Than Loneliness’s scarcity of breakdowns as a whole is exactly what makes these moments stand out so much. Most core acts nowadays fail to show restraint when it comes to breakdowns, often shoehorning them into every song.
There are a few moments of genericism that unfortunately hold
A Fate Worse Than Loneliness back from being one of 2026’s best debuts. The aforementioned
Make It Out, despite having highlight-worthy instrumentals, sadly has a chorus that falls flat and sounds like it could’ve been done to the same degree of quality by any other standard hard rock band out there. The EP’s closing track,
Paradigm, also misses the mark by quite a bit. I’m not faulting Showing Teeth for wanting to close out the EP with a slower track, but could they have at least made it a little more interesting? Instead, we get a song that has minimalist instrumentals in its opening and doesn’t get all that interesting until around the halfway mark when the instrumentation begins to intensify. By this point, it feels like too little, too late. In a vacuum, the song is far from being awful, but it's a noticeable drop-off in quality from the rest of
A Fate Worse Than Loneliness, and it results in the EP ending on somewhat of a low note.
Despite my gripes, as a first release,
A Fate Worse Than Loneliness is very impressive and proves that ADDISON’s online performances weren’t just a novelty. She has quickly become one of my favorite female vocalists to emerge this year, and I’m very interested to see the band evolve with time. If Showing Teeth can iron out the songwriting kinks from this release and become a bit more consistent, they have serious potential to release an amazing full-length album when the time comes.
3.75 out of 5
