Review Summary: same ol' good ol'..
From the smoked-out, ever-cheeky minds of MF DOOM and Inspectah Deck (along with 7L and Esoteric) comes
Czarface Meets Metal Face, another apocalyptic cartoon that taps back into the group's deep-set love for speech balloons, onomatopoeia sound effects and rap's hazy halcyon days. The pointed nostalgia that both Deck and DOOM have been trading in in the 2010's is on full display on the record, their fourth, but instead of harkening them back into some gilded moment, here it does more to calcify and date them. The comic book subculture that the two grew up and on which they've based their personas has lost its 'sub' aspect a while ago, gaining both widespread prominence and a vast new audience. That streamlined tack has seemingly seeped its way into the LP, and though plenty of that satirical malice finds its way into the songs, on the whole,
Czarface Meets Metal Face feels less a stirring clash between two stylish villains (and some evil cohorts), and more just a casual hangout caught on tape.
Sadly and surprisingly, it's DOOM who ends up being the album's weakest link. His flow always sported a sluggish unflappable edge, but here, it spirals on most every cut he takes on, and if before, his free and easy approach felt like a statement of style and a personalized pathos, nowadays he sounds beaten and plain beat. His exhaustion becomes painfully glaring in the face of the album's guest spots. On "Phantoms," DOOM mumbles his way through the first verse before Open Mike Eagle takes over with a fiery cluster of tiered and self-collapsing bars that leave the seasoned NY MC in the dust. Inspectah Deck is in markedly finer form and helps elevates cuts like "Astral Travelling," which even flaunts a DJ Premier-esque beat shift down the middle. Between Deck and the cameo artists, and DOOM occasionally showing that he's still got something room-temperature-like running through his veins (like the hi-hat heavy "Captain Crunch"),
Czarface Meets Metal Face has enough going for it to keep the listener tuned in through to its end. Still though, and perhaps most disappointingly, there's nothing here to either shift hip-hop's current landscape or add another classic track or two to the artists' respective canons. In the end, all
Czarface Meets Metal Face does is remind you that when misfiring, a throwback LP feels not like the lifeblood of able veterans showing what's what, but an hoary time capsule of better days past.
