The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast is the sixth studio album by Matmos. Each of the album's songs is dedicated to a notable gay or lesbian person who has influenced the duo, and this influence is reflected in the songs themselves. For examples, "Rag for William S. Burroughs" features the clatter of a type writer and a gunshot, representing the William Tell incident, and "Tract for Valerie Solanas" contains excerpts from the SCUM Manifesto.

As with earlier releases, the duo make use of field recordings in the music, recordings that range from ordinary things to more absurd sounds, such as a recording of a bovine uterus. The album's title is taken from a line in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.