Review Summary: A better, more serious version of ICP, and the best part is you don't have to join a cult to like them.
I’ve never been a big cinema person. Just something about it, the eight dollar popcorn buckets…the endless pre-movie advertisements…the middle school couple making out behind me, it’s just not my kind of thing. But especially during Halloween. What the hell happened to scary movies, anyway? They used to be creepy, eerie, and suspenseful, but now they’re just gory, predictable slasher films that bore me half to death. Speaking of which, the same thing has happened to horrorcore. Groups like Three 6 Mafia used spooky satanic lyrics and sinister beats to create rap’s equivalent of suspenseful horror movies, but the entire subgenre has just gone south, or rather up north. A staple within the subgenre, clown rap duo Twiztid from Detroit, Michigan exemplify the slasher films – err, albums – that are the exact reason I don’t attend theatres in the fall.
Horrorcore is usually entertaining, and really can’t go horribly wrong, although it’s just gangsta rap minus sex, drugs, money, and replaced with a graphic description of the violence, and Independent’s Day really couldn’t fit this more. With grotesque, sadistic lyrics like “
F*ck you and your platinum chains/I’d rather rip out your intestines and wear it on my neck just the same,” Twiztid should be kept far away from your mother and sister. As well as any friends that want great punchlines, because Madrox and Monoxide utterly fail when it comes to this, with mockable lines like “[i]I f*cked this one bitch raw like porno flicks/She was working my d*ck like my sh*t was a joystick,” thrown around. But, this is slasher rap, and it’s not something one should be looking for. Especially considering guest artists like ICP, Tech N9ne, and The Dayton Family scream this out.
But, despite their gruesome, graphic lyrics, their production creates the suspenseful feel that I absolutely adore. The ghastly background “hoooo’s,” dark, underlying piano sample and the creepy violins of Bury ‘em All serve to create an atmospheric, supernatural mood as do the low-lying, screechy, stretched-out guitars, gentle twinkles, and prolonged strings of Sex, Drugs, Money & Murder. But the production and lyrics aren’t at all the problem on this album.
It’s the rapping, bluntly stated – basically every aspect of it [the rapping.] While they both have simple flows and deliveries that bring nothing special to the concoction, their voices are at best, highly annoying, and at worst, intolerable. Jamie Madrox’s voice just obviously suggests “white trash” and Monoxide’s voice is a croaky, rough, low grunt and is rather painful to hear. And all elements of the rapping hurt the sound component of the album, which never bodes well in any case.
This isn’t the best horrorcore you can get by far, and this is one of those “feast or famine” albums to a large majority of people. Surely enough, Independent’s Day has its flaws, mainly manifesting themselves within the voiceboxes of Monoxide and Jamie Madrox. This album isn’t excellent, and is rather quite far from it. But 57 minutes of this for ten dollars is a helluva lot better than seeing some ditzy, busty college babes and their jerk boyfriends get axed to death by some psychotic lunatic for 100 minutes for twenty bucks by far any day.
