Death Grips - Bottomless Pit

Pitchfork 81

The experimental band Negativland introduced the concept of “culture jamming” to the world in 1984, defining it as “an awareness of how the media environment we occupy affects and directs our inner life.” They coined the term largely as a cynical reaction to America’s commercial monuments: billboards, logos, fashion trends and the like, but the phrase’s subtext isn’t as nihilistic as it may seem. By defining the phrase, Negativland and their peers legitimized it as a tool to deface and expose the dark side of capitalism, inviting artists to punch back through graffiti, guerrilla radio, fliers, and other media. With the advent of Internet and social media, culture jamming’s grown more ubiquitous than ever. (As a matter of fact, the word “meme” also refers to the imagery that jammers disseminate en masse.) Just like graffiti, Dat Boi, Boaty McBoatface, and Make America Great Again hats disrupt our global communication systems and incite reactions ranging from befuddled amusement to anger, fear, and dejection.

Zach Hill, Andy Morin, and Stefan Burnett (otherwise known as MC Ride) are easily the most talented, impactful culture jammers of the streaming age: a distinction primarily owed to just how seriously the California trio take those ideas. Never mind the Trojan Horse they pulled on Epic, the deep web album leaks, the no-shows—the real subversion’s in Death Grips' music, which continues to draw huge audiences (see: the massive crowd who filled the Gobi tent for their headlining Coachella set) and unsurprisingly, co-signs from fellow pranksters like Tyler, the Creator and Eric André. It’s no surprise that the loudest contingency of their fanbase resides on an infamous image-board; Death Grips speak directly to the dark worldview that accompanies years wasted lurking online, getting high off digital schadenfreude. (Been there.)

On their new album Bottomless Pit, they stitch together one of their most cohesive grotesques ever, renewing their focus on songcraft, rather than chicanery. It's sure to elicit a sigh of relief among fans who’ve grown jaded with the band’s work. Opening track “Giving Bad People Good Ideas" opens on a feint—an eerie, descending vocal from Cherry Glazerr vocalist Clementine Creevy, the feminine foil to macho, malicious Burnett. The lilting intro gives way to a black-metal sprint, with Tera Melos’ Nick Reinhart churning out jagged tremolo riffs. The follow-up blow carries that momentum further: “Hot Head” starts off inside a cartoon fight cloud spinning off towards oblivion, a blur of percussive jabs, whooshing machines, and screamed gibberish. From there, the song takes an equally disorienting nose-dive into a slack, spacious verse.

Death Grips draw heavily on abrasive styles, but the group are arguably at their most lethal when they're hijacking popular tastes, as they did on 2012’s The Money Store, and as they do here. With their stacked guitar riffs, dissonant samples, and glitchy percussion, “Spikes” and “Three Bedrooms In A Good Neighborhood” invoke an alternate history where hip-hop and metal fusion didn't dead-end into visions of Fred Durst’s punchable mug. The EBM-flavored “80808” supercharges a house-y backbeat with additional crackles and pops; the choruses expand that texture, dialing up the voltage until the synths alight in an arc flash. The most straightforward of these standouts is “Eh,” a rap song anchored in glimmering, burbling synths that dart in and out of the bass drums’ margins. Unmoved by the giddy surroundings, Burnett deadpans his morbid imagery with unusual calm, as if a tranquilizer dart struck him mid-verse: “Catch me hanging from my noose like ehhhh,” he yawns, stretching out the final syllable like putty.

MC Ride has long been regarded as Death Grips’ anchor, both onstage and off: a privilege largely owed to a pair of vocal cords which never seem to tire, even as the man screams himself sick. On Bottomless Pit he offers his most athletic performance to date, double-dutching over fallen power on “80808,” bobbing and weaving over Krautrock shards on “Ring A Bell,” and howling out in agony as the machines draw and quarter him on “Warping.” It’s not all gloom-and-doom, however; “Bubbles Buried in this Jungle” and “Trash" showcase a seething monotone delivery that taps into the absurd, comedic undertones buried in this madcap project. It's certainly difficult not to crack a smile on "Houdini," wherein he roasts hipsters (“Fuck is that, a hairstyle?/This asshole be at pussy church, first”) and instructs us,“Don’t stop that okey doke stroke.”

For all its chaos and fury, Bottomless Pit is Death Grips' most accessible record since The Money Store. It has a distractingly uneven mix, seesawing from grit to gloss and back again, and some of the sparser moments, like mid-album would-be barnburner "Houdini," are trying, but overall it is a resounding success. It might not win them new fans, but "new fans" have never been an integral part of the Death Grips experience: You're either in or you're out. If you're in, you will probably grin wider than you have through any Death Grips album in years.