Death Grips as told by Death Grips
The industrial hip-hop trio’s lyrics get chopped and screwed.
- Brandon English
- MC Ride of Death Grips.
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There have been countless essays, columns, and hasty obituaries written on the inexplicable rise, fall, and comeback of Death Grips. Initially the enigmatic trio of drummer Zach Hill, keyboardist and production alchemist Andy “Flatlander” Morin, and poet-laureate of the apocalypse, Stefan “MC Ride” Burnett, was met with little attention. Ex-Military, the group’s debut mixtape, bore all the hallmarks of a subversive classic made to stay underground.
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Yet somehow the trio signed with label behemoth Epic Records, and in 2012 Death Grips blew up independent media outlets with The Money Store, quickly followed by No Love Deep Web, an album with the most unabashedly alienating cover of all time (hint: it’s a penis). Both records received near unanimous acclaim and the cult of Death Grips began to take shape. After releasing Deep Web for free against the wishes of Epic, the band became more notorious for the firestorms of controversy it started than its actual music.
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In 2013, Death Grips was scheduled to play an official Lollapalooza after party, but didn’t show up with anything other than a toy drum kit and an image of a supposed fan suicide note projected on the backdrop. Chaos ensued. Fans destroyed the drum kit and Death Grips’ remaining tour dates were cancelled. The circumstances around this incident remain murky. Was it some sort of performance art? Was Death Grips planning to tour with just a suicide note and a phony drum kit? Was there even an intention at all?
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Fears were temporarily assuaged when Government Plates, the group’s fourth record, was released. Then Death Grips was scheduled to tour with Nine Inch Nails, but the trio cancelled, and a breakup note was posted on its Facebook page. Yet the group’s longest, and arguably most compelling album was released earlier this year, a double album tour de force entitled The Powers That B. And in the most wonderfully tongue-in-cheek response ever, Death Grips recently posted on its Facebook: “You’re right, we might make some more.”
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Considering an interview with Death Grips is nigh impossible, the next best thing is detailed below. For the uninitiated, here are short reviews of Death Grips’ five major releases, created (almost) entirely from MC Ride’s lyrics used on the respective albums. Enjoy.
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“Out of thin air, with a freak flag flying, Ex-Military is built on a filthy sound. Its sound is one of those things that seems outlandish until you’re swerving in a blazing fire. These rhymes stomp out of the shadows with a witch tongue. The marching war drums blow through walls like a runaway train. At the end of it all, Death Grips seize each track Jim Morrison-style, possessed by cascading shades of insanity.”
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The Money Store
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“Volume blasting, raining madness, you have been warned. The Money Store pierces the bone with guerrilla bass and death stomp drums. Tongues cocked, these lost boys break down cookie cutter influences, melting subwoofers and screaming basilisk rhymes. Linens-N-Things can’t handle this reclusive/aggressive darkness, waging war to the cadence of an ambulance running through a mine field laced with black magic.”
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“No Love Deep Web exhales Andy Morin’s nuclear sine waves, devouring slow motion bass rattles in a self-contained chaos. Barely breathing, MC Ride’s schizo superscript words bear the mark of ruthless ODB messages and figments of cryptic Edgar Allan Poe premonitions. Zach Hill’s manic downstrokes beat like a mad choo choo train squealing through Sodom at 3:30 in the morning. Following no rules or fragmented reason, these bulldozing beats flood your jugular with tear gas and a kamikaze state of consciousness.”
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“Listening to Government Plates is like having your head in a furnace. Prepare yourself for sadistic supremacy, swelled pupils, and delusional hysterics. Embalmed whispers hover over kettle-black drum rolls like rip currents pulling on a ghost ship. Death Grips is a corporation with no agenda, selling high burning dopamine fixes.”
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“How do you define The Powers That B? Death Grips’ whirling statement on the United States’ art of indifference and inanimate social agony favors freedom over comfort. Constant blown out bass vibrates over throbbing thermonuclear synths in a sonic alchemy of impurified smoke. MC Ride’s mummified words stretch over the record like a jaundice-yellow terracotta army on a bed of nails. The band wears its shadow stigmata with morbid pride, sending its sensory contagion with thunderbolt speed. Some fans feared this record would raise the funeral sails of Death Grips’ demise, but if The Powers That B’s spider silk silhouette proves anything, it’s the rise of Death Grips 2.0.”
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Death Grips plays a sold out show at the Masquerade on Tues., July 14. 7 p.m. Heaven Stage. 695 North Ave. N.E. 404-577-8178. www.masq.com.