Review Summary: be afraid.
It came out of nowhere, akin to a vicious alien ambush upon our humble little planet. The young producer prodigy named Chee has officially unleashed the most diabolical slab of forward thinking bass music the world has ever known. Okay, pardon the hype train here, but
Fear Monger really is that good. The genetic makeup of Chee’s first LP is diverse and difficult to pin down. Driven by an insatiable desire to break musical boundaries without losing the secret ingredients that make a dance floor go absolutely mad,
Fear Monger is a perfect balance of subwoofer-destroying indulgence and subtle craftsmanship. Much akin to the likes of NOISIA, Ivy Lab, Kursa, and EPROM, this creative sound swami hones in on a perfect balance between musicality and unabashed nastiness here. Namedropping aside, Chee clearly isn't content being a soundalike to anybody, and is quickly carving a distinct sound all his own with a heavy neurohop influence bleeding into a melting pot of unhinged mania and frantically shapeshifting, apocalyptic soundscapes.
Indeed, many of the more mainstream heavyweights of the bass music world rely on parlor-trick production, pop music sensibilities and status-quo familiarity to make bodies move. They come and go, and many once-blockbuster releases begin to gather dust as the technology that spawned their creation drives their sound into obsolescence. The only real remedy for this time-bound withering is the tried and true concept of actually writing good songs, something we receive through the entire runtime of
Fear Monger in spades. One can't help but dawn a smile as Chee perpetually flexes his dynamic knowledge of nuanced songwriting as each track builds upon the cataclysmic successes of the last while foreshadowing the further degradation of mental faculties to be elaborated further on the next. Balancing pleasure with pain in equal measure,
Fear Monger is a highly choreographed dance of complex sound design in a perpetual state of exciting self-transformation.
Cuts like “Rancid” and “Darker Than Black” hit with the intensity of death metal’s finest bludgeonings, with a neck snapping braggadocio that would be worthy of any moshpit. A bevy of substance and variety abound, and through its runtime, Fear Monger stays far away from mindless gas-pedaling. Rather, Chee’s approach to exemplary aggression is built upon methodically yet quickly shifting and acrobatic outbursts of entrancing rhythm – knowing exactly how and when to build you up to disorienting heights only to turn and pummel you into a shivering pile of burnt synapses at a whim. The young producer boasts an uncanny ability to make songs seemingly stagger under their own colossal mass as idiosyncratic nuances to the movements frequently macro-adjust the musical kinesiology like a dungeon master of sound bending his subject to his own masochistic desires. Unconventional structuring, intriguing time signatures and turbid glitches make this a truly delicious assault with seemingly infinite layers of sonic sadism on display at all times.
All but the most obfuscated elements of dubstep and drum and bass are in action here, and with this offshoot style called neurohop still in its' under-recognized infancy, staple genre tags wash off this album like water on a freshly waxed sportscar. "Progressive" and "experimental", used as prefixes to almost anything that even slightly breaks convention, are tossed around by music journalists with reckless abandon in an apparent attempt to equivocate their personal infatuations, but make no mistake, Chee is most certainly an epitomized example of progressive and experimental electronic dance music done correctly. Without suffering from illusions of grandeur and without falling victim to pretentious inaccessibility,
Fear Monger is an extremely tangible landmark in the bass music world, and will forever be remembered as a bonafide envelope pusher.
