Death Grips: The Money Store

Posted on 24 April 2012 by Bowlegs

Death Grips - album review

There’s interference on the bandwidth, re-tuned to noise and experimentation – maybe a step into the musical unknown? More like a reflection of today’s relentless speed-train society, I can hardly hear myself think some days.

Death Grips use the three-pronged attack – with Zach Hill on rhythm (the go to man for well-timed mayhem), Andy Morin (aka Flatliner) picking discarded and buzzing sound-bytes (both down as producers) and MC Ride on the mic, switching between aggression and the calm seas. Between them they’ve certainly found a unique voice.

Initially you may not believe that opener Get Got is the group at their most restrained. Ride talks fast, but never breaks from conversation; the looping and fluctuating synth-lines are distressed but remain constant. From here on Ride flexes his vocal aggression. The excellent The Fever (Aye Aye) has electronics sounding like a warning siren, while he flows with an impressive run of wailing words.

Kudos to Hill and Morin – not many could build such an impressive arena of noise, dropping elements of dark days, noise, rock and a healthy dose of newfound ground for the rap genre. Distorting the beats provides a grimy canvas for Ride to paint his lyrical lines.

Sure this can get in your face – listen to Fuck That, a mutated tribal backbone has Ride rolling out wordplay with frenetic skill. Other tracks, like Bitch Please, actually utilise synth riffs with a musical nature – it cruises, but it’s still Death Grips, so fear not.

Getting into the Death Grips headspace isn’t as hard as you might think – it’s as cluttered, confused and frustrated as most of us probably feel on a daily basis. These guys have just given us something to soundtrack the inner anarchist in all of us.

7.5

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