Death Grips - The Money Store (Epic, 2012)

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From my report of Exmilitary to today, Sacramento trio Death Grips have encountered a swarm of new listeners and countless lyrical references spewed onto just about every social media platform. Even more remarkable than their prompt popularity is their recent signing to Epic, the major subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment. A margin of fans consequently chastised the band for the typical argument of falling prey to the money-hungry industry, though I suspect that they're just bummed about the inability to freely download a new Death Grips album without their consent. Zach Hill and Stefan Burnett disclosed that the label understood their vision, and The Money Store is evidence of their adherence.

The fans' discontent is warranted, but its impetus isn't any attempt at widespread appeal. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find a weirder album in the Epic catalog. Much of what made Exmilitary's impact so great remains on The Money Store, though Death Grips' employment of Hill-attributed noise has waned. The experimentalism to compensate is in Burnett's rapping and articulation, which have devolved into hypnotic mantras and reinforced vocal edits. For instance, the chorus of the first track revealed by the band, "Blackjack", is a series of cyclical reversals bearing no decipherable lyrics. If this is a cash-grab, the revenue certainly won't be garnered from radio stations.

Death Grips met such great success last year not just because of their free marketing, but because of their allure to a number of disparate audiences. The Money Store is sure to challenge the once open-armed hip-hop community, for Burnett's verses and the baffling instrumentals have congealed into an even more cohesive unit. Exmilitary's subject matter dealt with addiction, loss of reason, and society's devolution into communication by internet slang. "Bitch Please" seems as if Burnett has succumbed to the primitivism once criticized with a line suggestive of southern rap, "Drop it like, oh yeah that's so trashy / How low can you go? How dirty can you get? / Nasty." It'd be an opportune moment to make a Lil Jon comparison if its trunk-rattling beat didn't maul traditional Asian music cuts and interrupt choice measures with deafening digital hiss.

With their primal lyricism and transfixing production, Death Grips have advanced their forte of inducing a bestial trance into listeners. This motif reaches its zenith when the band veers toward driving dance- and house-like rhythms on tracks such as "I've Seen Footage" and "Hacker", with repetitive, feral hooks. The former matches an adrenaline-rousing throb with accounts of filmed death and the unnerved response it can elicit. The latter instrumentally fits Wiley's self-defining mold of 'eski beat', though daunts, "I'm in your area / I know the first three numbers." The Money Store captures street life through an uncompromising lens foreseeing our implacably degenerate future-- a chord Death Grips have struck once before, but here it rings louder than ever. Stay noided, folks.



[Death Grips Website]
[Stream/Buy The Money Store from Epic]

Death Grips - Exmilitary (Self-Released, 2011)

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Zach Hill is one of the most active men in modern music. He has worked with just about every figure in independent music, from finger-tapping goddess Marnie Stern to Nathan Wiliams-- I know. Transitioning from band to band and punishing ears with his solo work, Hill has consistently managed to infuse his dizzying brand of eccentricity into every release. Most recently, aside from the much-anticipated Hella album to be released this summer, Hill’s most recent venture has been in the hip-hop trio Death Grips, which, despite whatever may reside in his discography years from now, will be forever known as one of his most staggering projects.

Even after being awestruck by one of Death Grips’ earliest tracks, “Full Moon (Death Classic),” the debut mixtape Exmilitary remained a challenging 48 minutes. These 13 songs rarely exhibit its sporadic, groove-negligent rhythms, and instead embrace the use of electronically crafted beats, which cease to entail anything traditional ahead. The instrumental foundation for Exmilitary ranges from the foreboding sparseness of “Guillotine (It Goes Yah)” to the infectiously fractured cadence of “Culture Shock”-- both of which and everything in between stand consonantly chaotic and dissonant.

Lyrics and subject matter also cosmically coincide with the ugly, rebellious disposition of the beats. “Spread Eagle Cross the Block” details how one’s urges can overcome their own rationale, while “Thru the Walls” illustrates failed attempts to subjugate addictions and the sudden realization of those faults. Death Grips’ MC doesn’t vent these clever lines in a compelling, revelatory manner; they’re shouted to induce the uncompromising thought that self-depreciation will never end.

Exmilitary is a transcending collision of rap, noise, and hardcore, one currently unmatched as one of the most original releases of the year. Death Grips are a group willing to polarize all ears, even in a day where Goblin’s audacious dissidence and epidemic hype equate to sheer irony. Exmilitary drafts (no pun intended) one of the rare occasions where lyricism fosters its backbone, and vice versa.



[Death Grips Soundcloud]
[Download Exmilitary from Death Grips' website]