Pianos Become The Teeth

In the late 2000s, Pianos Become the Teeth emerged from Baltimore, Maryland, where they fused intense screamo textures with a melodic post-rock approach, helping shape the post-hardcore movement that flourished throughout the following decade alongside Touché Amoré, La Dispute, and Defeater. The band coalesced in late 2006 under the leadership of vocalist and lyricist Kyle Durfey, issuing a self-recorded debut album titled Old Pride in 2009 that Boston’s Top Shelf Records quickly licensed for a national reissue the next year. That 2010 release marked their first brush with wider recognition, after which they issued a split EP with the Saddest Landscape toward the end of the same year and then tracked a darker, weightier follow-up.

Sessions for The Lack Long After concluded in time for its November 2011 arrival, prompting an extensive run of dates alongside Touché Amoré and Seahaven. Over the ensuing two years the group refined both its live presentation and its recorded identity, securing a deal with Epitaph Records in early 2014 that yielded the Will Yip-produced Keep You that October. The album represented another deliberate pivot, tempering earlier ferocity in favor of subtler, melody-driven post-rock arrangements that the band further refined on 2018’s Wait for Love, striking a balance between forceful and atmospheric material.

For their fifth long-player, Drift, released in 2022, Pianos Become the Teeth once again enlisted Kevin Bernsten—the same producer who had helmed Old Pride and The Lack Long After—resulting in a dense, hauntingly atmospheric collection that sustained the melodic direction first explored after their move to Epitaph.