Review Summary: “You’ve got no business questionin’ a thing…!”
Death Grips are mysterious. After their self-released breakout mixtape,
Ex Military, the group signed to Epic Records, and from which they released their sophomore LP (widely regarded as their best), the infamous
The Money Store. Decorated with the ambiguous wolf-masked figure and its owner, the dark album was clearly an acquired taste, reflecting upon the lives of paranoid, misanthropic outlaws (take for example the first song, “Get Got”, which tells of a paranoid city man). Against the wishes of the aforementioned label, Death Grips posted
No Love Deep Web, their third album, for free download on their website, resulting in a violent excommunication from the company. Bluntly put, they deserved it. Not only did this bizarre hip-hop group totally piss Epic Records off, but
No Love’s most dispelling and visually controversial quality is the startling image that appears before you at the top of this page: a penis.
This LP is enigmatic, I believe, in that way; it opens psychological doors in the auditor’s mind that are either too provocative and evil for show, or just haven’t been discovered yet. Its lyrics, shouted unintelligibly by skilled and often shirtless rapper MC Ride, can be flat-out haunting, like the opening track, “Come Up and Get Me”, whose lyrics portray a person stuck in a building, and also explores the darker side of human urges and addictions (“Too many hoes in my muthaf***in’ meal… Slit them choke, flip them boat / Dead bitch float swollen corpse” depicts a violent sex addict). The LP’s droning, doom-wrought beats never fail relent in their intensity.
Musically,
No Love is composed of ponderous drumming of Zach Hill and fat, atonal melodies made by Andy Morin, which hone a much less gratifying or progressive style here than on their earlier releases. In fact, in much contrast to the album prior to this, most of the tracks on this LP sound incredibly similar -- songs like “Stockton” and “No Love” along with the opener have the same buzzy, deep effects, while “Whammy” suffers from severe boredom and repetition which exposes the rest of the album for how mundane and uninspiring it tapers off to. Praised for its simplicity, this still prevails as its most obvious hindrance.
Almost eloquent lyrics save the LP from absolute boredom; however, repeated choruses in songs like “Artificial Death in the West” and “Lock Your Doors” are extremely hard to like. At times, the lyrics to the latter describe the vibe that this album as a whole puts off: “I got some *** to say, just for the f**k of it.” Much less passionate and thought-out than their prior releases, Death Grips’ mediocrity pokes through here. However, aside from the very homogenous musicality, Death Grips still remains as aggressive and dark as they were the same year. The majority of the tracks still feature plethoras of plethoras of utterly mysterious stories and lyricism that, at times, sounds like it would fit well being professed at an Alcoholics Anonymous podium, and still has a clearer vision of the world than the most insane of the insane.
No Love Deep Web listens well, but the circumstances under which it was released beg the question: is Death Grips TRYING to be controversial? The ugly truth is probably ‘yes’ -- provocativeness makes this album kind of empty, shock value being the main intention. Stripped-down, simple beats and production makes this reviewer see how rushed and thrown-together this album seems; Death Grips clearly had an idea along the ideas presented by “Hey, guys, wouldn’t it be funny if we signed to a major label, but then, the same year, totally pissed them off? Our fans would LOVE that!”
And they know we all ate it up.
6.9/10
