Artist: Death Grips
Album: No Love Deep Web
Reviewer: Zach Bores
The year is 2012. The Mayan calendar was coming to an end, and in high school my friends and I were preparing to say our goodbyes come December at the end of the year. I was happy enough to have The Money Store by Death Grips as a soundtrack for the apocalypse, as it helped me get through the rapture of the previous year 2011 unscathed. I was very excited and following the band closely for info about their new album to be released through Epic, and after listening to The Money Store and Ex Military hundreds of times at that point I was champing at the bit for more. Apparently the band had said that the new album wouldn’t be out for another year, and I knew by then that it wouldn’t matter (Mayan calendar), but they kept hinting to look out in October for something. At the time I remember kind of just assuming it would be a few songs or maybe a single or whatever, which was still exciting. And then it happened. Leaked by the band October 1, No Love Deep Web was released with an album cover that still holds controversy, but has good reason and artistic value.
I remember spending a lot of time walking alone listening to this record at full volume on my iPod Nano and feeling insane (in a really great way). The album is 13 tracks full of punishing electronics and lyrics of dystopia, isolation and esotericism from MC Ride, and sometimes lush and danceable, sometimes polyrhythmic V-drum punishment from Zach Hill. The title track “Come Up and Get Me” is a disorienting assault of lyrics and pulsating synth drums and boom claps that feel like a train on fire randomly glitching up a hundred feet in the air and hitting the ground. “Lil Boy” starts with a smokers anthem-like chorus repeated throughout, and then a four-on-the-floor house banger here and there, turned into a collapsing floor of V-drum patterns from Zach with MC Ride rapping, “I’m inside my T.V. where everyone but I can see me.” Love it. “No Love” is a very lyric-heavy, organic drum back and forth between Zach and Ride that feels like you’re in an empty wasteland at sunset. “Black Dice” is probably the one that makes me dance the most, the beautiful synth lines and breaks with Ride’s lyrics and minimal instrumentation making for one of my favorites. “World of Dogs”…… WELCOME TO THE SPIRAL!!!! Have to be in the right headspace for this one. “Lock Your Doors” is beautifully atmospheric with heavy sound echoes and lyric repetitions that have more of that wasteland feeling. The lyrics feel like an ask for sacrifice. “Whammy” has my favorite drum performance from Hill, which feels like a blast into the future to the first half of the double album The Powers That B. Love the vocal sample chop-up on this one. And of course, WH-WH-WH-WH-WH-WH-WH-WHAMMY!!! “Hunger Games” is a stripped-down, lopsided bass slammer with some hardass words from Ride. “Deep Web” feels like being blasted in the face by a barcode scanner in the eyes at night in a wave pool. “Stockton” is exactly what MC Ride is talking about in the song. Pummeling. It feels like you’re in a secret factory that’s machine-welding massive parts in a secret government location. “Pop” has some of my favorite instrumentation, with high-end synth arpeggiations and soundscapes and offbeat drum lines with Ride floating on top of everything. “Bass Rattle Stars Out the Sky” is sporadic insanity with Ride and Hill going on 11/10. All of the sounds are burning in the atmosphere on the way down. “Artificial Death in the West” feels like a space futuristic heavy dub song in the instrumentation at points, with piercing and fading synth lines and lyrics from Ride that fill every space of the speakers, hitting from every angle and direction, echoing away slowly.
In retrospect, with all of the work Death Grips has put out now, No Love Deep Web still holds up as one of my favorites by the group. I feel it holds a good balance of the sound of their first two full-length albums and really shows where their sound was going on the projects that were to come. I’m happy that this album was released by their choice and under their control, and I’m so thankful that they singlehandedly negated the oncoming apocalypse we all thought was sure to come due to the prophecy of the end of the Mayan calendar.