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Death Grips – Exmilitary [Industrial Hip-Hop]

Release date 25^th April 2011

Beware.

This is an angry record.

A really angry record.

This review will contain a lot of swearing and unpleasant imagery.

You have been warned.

Death Grips is a highly experimental hip-hop trio, consisting of Stefan Burnett AKA MC Ride on vocals, Zach Hill on drums, and producer Andy Morin filling in the gaps between them with a mix of samples and original cuts. The group exploded onto the music scene 3 years ago with their mixtape/debut album Exmilitary, confusing hip-hop heads, surprising music critics, and terrifying parents.

Combining drill-sergeant style rapping with elements of industrial music, punk rock, hard-core hip-hop, and noise, Death Grips are the scariest group I have ever heard.

Scratch that.

They’re not scary; they’re fucking psychopathic and highly disturbing. The first words you hear on Exmilitary are from none other than Charles Manson, rambling on about running the underworld and living out of a sleeping bag before he reaches his bizarre conclusion; “I make the money, man. I roll the nickels. The game is mine. I deal the cards."

The first track is aptly named Beware, and MC Ride doesn't beat around the bush; he gnashes his teeth and sets fire to it instead. As soon as Manson has finished his introduction, Ride shouts out the first hook:

“I close my eyes and seize it!

I clench my fists and beat it!

I light my torch and burn it!

I am the beast I worship!”

The first time I heard Exmilitary I hated it. It’s so abrasive, so angry, and so crazy that it makes Scandinavian Blackened Death Metal sound like Celine Dion. Every sample on here is twisted and manipulated so heavily it becomes a monstrosity of sound; you feel sick, confused, angry, and scared for your sanity.

Despite being initially put off, I've found this record and this group incredibly addictive, to the point where I can’t get through the week without a listen.

I imagine this is how crack addiction feels.

If you try to look for beautiful melody and harmony on this record you’ll be left disappointed. But if you let the tribal, rhythmic, noisy sounds take over, you’re rewarded with enough energy to restart a dead star. For all its insanity, rage, and experimentation, Exmilitary is also surprisingly catchy, memorable, and fun. Well, in the same way waking up in the middle of the road with no clothes on, or inciting a riot might be considered fun.

The second track on here, Guillotine, is a cryptic and dark stream of consciousness over the philosophical conundrum of executing people through music, with Death Grips ready to make you shake around until your head literally falls off. By the third verse, MC Ride is done contemplating the issue of death, and instead relishes in the thought of burning the headless corpses before they rot:

“Head of a trick in a bucket, body of a trick in a bag,

And thrown in the fire like fuck it, gotta burn it before it goes bad,

One too many times been disgusted by the stench of rot is such a drag, yah!”

Death Grips certainly know how to make an impact.

The next track, Spread Eagle Cross the Block, starts by punching you in the ear with some brass knuckles. MC Ride’s voice is ear piercingly sharp and brittle as it echoes over itself, repeating the title of the song before Link Wray’s Rumble starts to loop in the background.

This track is completely insane; a mad, football hooligan style chant about getting as fucked up as physically possible, while a badass Tarantino style surf instrumental ravages your ear holes in the background.  Every word is shouted with immense amounts of energy, describing the absolute rock bottom of drug addiction; you need it, you’ll steal it, you won’t share it, and there’s never enough of it.

Every track on Exmilitary is pure, experimental, genius; I’ve never heard music that was this unpleasant that I've loved so much. From the glitchy, industrial 8 bit melodies on Lord of the Game, to the dry guitar riffs on I Want It I Need It (Death Heated), Death Grips have mastered the art of making the vile and the putrid oddly enjoyable.

The highlight of this album is three of the middle tracks; Culture Shock, 5D, and Thru the Walls. Culture Shock starts off with a screwed up vocal sample from David Bowie’s The Supermen before launching into a heavy industrial groove which gives the impression that Andy Morin has finally snapped  and started licking the windows. MC Ride is much calmer than usual on this track, providing some much needed relief from his manic ramblings on Klink. Instead, he takes the opportunity here to address the shortcomings of western culture; filling your head with useless information, following pathetic trends and being influenced by an increasingly homogenised media until the whole thing inevitably face plants into oblivion.

Culture Shock then transitions into 5D, an instrumental reworking of the Pet Shop Boy’s infamous hit West End Girls. The familiar melody and spaced-out beat provides a brief moment of calm and clarity before being swiftly trampled by the psychotic carnival of Thru the Walls. A raging, braggadocious rant, Thru the Walls is initially a boast from MC Ride about his dangerous flow skills, but by the third verse, it’s a pretty tragic lament about his deteriorating mental health:

“Staring at the ceiling in the dark,

Trying not to let the feeling, tear you apart,

But the silence is buzzing and it won't stop,

Tell yourself it's almost over, but it's not.”

This is Exmilitary in a nutshell; instead of straddling the line between genius and insanity, Death Grips rips big bloody chunks out of both. One minute, MC Ride is creating amazing socially conscious poetry about the downfalls of modern society, the next he’s smoking crack and having unprotected anal sex with prostitutes.

Don’t say I didn't warn you.

[10/10]