3TEETH Releases Songs Recorded for “Guns Akimbo” Starring Daniel Radcliffe

Guns Akimbo, Jason Lei Howden’s gory action-horror starring Daniel Radcliffe, saw its release in February to mixed reviews. This week, 3TEETH’s two-track record made for the film has also been released. This soundtrack album may be a far cry from John Williams’s melodious tunes, but it was just the ticket to take Daniel’s scenes to the next level, and it almost didn’t even get made.

While Daniel walked away from filming in New Zealand with happy memories, the director was not so appeased. “I was approaching the end of Guns Akimbo post production [sic] and had a big problem. None of the music cues for a particular action scene were working,” Howden told NextMosh. “The scene features our hero Miles (Daniel Radcliffe) being tracked down to his work by a deranged spree killer, who proceeds to spray the office with a lead bukkake. It needed something special.”

That is indeed a special scene to find music for. Therefore, Howden wrote to 3TEETH, an industrial metal band from California, on Twitter asking for just one cover song at first. “I had been thrashing their latest album, METAWAR, which is pretty much the official soundtrack to the apocalyptic hellscape we call modern society,” the Guns Akimbo director said about 3TEETH, one of his favorite bands. “I knew their catchy brand of industrial metal would be perfect for the on-screen insanity.” The band’s frontman, Alexis “Lex” Mincolla, told NextMosh that he was on board at once despite being in the middle of an eight-week summer tour:

I thought his [Howden’s] last film, Deathgasm, was super fun, and when he told me the plot and showed me some scenes for Guns Akimbo, I was immediately interested. He then told me the cover songs it would be, which made me a little skeptical, and [then] told me we basically had, like, 10 days to turn in masters, which was pretty daunting because we literally had 1 day off on our tour schedule, which landed 2 days before it needed to be turned in. I knew it was going to be nearly impossible, but I said, [‘]f*** it, we’ll make it happen.[‘]

And made it happen, they did. The band went into Southern Ground studios in Nashville, Tennessee, after their show and didn’t leave for 12 hours until a solid cover of Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” was ready to be sent to the film’s production team. “I remember thinking to myself at one point, [‘]why the f*** did I agree to this time frame[?’] and how badly everyone just wanted to sleep in on our day off,” Mincolla said about the experience, “but somehow, someway, it [all] worked out, and Jason and the producers loved the music. So the lesson learned here is, f*** days off.” The result is an awesome take on the ’80s glam pop hit.

Howden added that “the producers loved the track so much that they agreed to have them record a second cover song,” Sweet’s “The Ballroom Blitz,” which accompanies the Dead or Alive cover on the record, now available to purchase or stream. Despite the band’s hectic schedule in the thick of touring when they recorded the songs, the director won’t tell you not to meet your heroes. “Working with 3TEETH on the film was an absolute blast. These singles are like crack for your ears and compliment the bubblegum hyperviolence of Guns Akimbo perfectly,” Howden said.

Daniel is famous for picking roles in films that demand an acquired taste. After premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2019 to good reviews, by the time it saw its public release on February 28, critics had given it a 64% score on Rotten Tomatoes. You can see for yourself: Guns Akimbo is available to watch on Amazon Prime. Aside from Daniel, it features Samara Weaving (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Rhys Darby (Yes Man), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Hotel Mumbai), Ned Dennehy (Peaky Blinders, as well as a scared man in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1), and of course, 3TEETH’s tracks.