Face the feast of powder

Death Grips - Exmilitary
2011, Third Worlds

Brutal, noisy, weird avant garde hiphop. That's what this is. Dunno who made it, dunno why and I don't really care. All I'm concerned with is this: It kills! The scope of my knowledge of hiphop/rap has never been what you would call encyclopedic or even vaguely moderate. Sure I've listened to the sassy swinging sounds of the Beasties, the politically potent pontifications of Chuck D and his soul brethren, the equally politically laced lamentations and litanies of Consolidated and maybe a few others, but in all honesty, rap never really did it for me. That is, until I heard the Exmilitary mixtape by Death Grips (I have no clue why it's called a mixtape. To me it's an album, but hey what the hell do I know?). This is some whole other level of shit right here. This is downright evil. The beats are huge and oftentimes kind of odd and the music, most likely collected and scavenged from hundreds of places, is fierce and not a little bit disturbing, in a Whitehouse/Sutcliffe Jügend kind of way. Not that this is anywhere near any power electronics kind of territory, it's just that it's noisy and unhinged and more than just a bit bipolar. As are the vocals and the lyrics, that are often like stream of consciousness style rantings and at times really confrontational and aggressive. Check out the band's (is this even a band?) website for free downloads, webstore, videos and lyrics. DON'T miss this, whatever you do.