Finally it had arrived, did it live up to expectations? In short, yes and the short summary would be, did you like ‘The Money Store’? This is 2.0, produced and improved upon the previous ideas and lessons learnt from all previous albums raised to a near pinnacle of their pop-oriented sound. Without going through every track in analysis, the album kicks off with ‘Giving Bad People Good Ideas’ which is the most black metal inspired track I’ve seen them do yet, very old school Darkthrone or Mayhem, blasting straight off after the vocal hook into pummelling guitars banging the track onwards as Ride fears he might turn to dust crumbling under the pressure of the fame high, asking fans not to trip over personal details and don’t praise them for what they do. Feeling as if he needs to stay away, for fear of being misunderstood by casual listeners, perhaps the eponymous ‘bad people(?)’

The second track the aforesaid ‘Hot Head’ was the first track released publicly before the album dropped has had changes to the bassline and overall production with new interludes and a longer introduction. It maintains the same impact as its first version, extremely loud, Ride’s going absolutely crazy repeating “blow-blow-blow” for the parts in between the hook and verses. Giving the opposite vibe from the first track, it’s more about how Death Grips is brazen and unfiltered and this existence of being perpetually self-inflicted hellish energy, evoking occult and Crowleyan satanic themes in the verses, Ride himself backs away from society, as he has implied with many tracks in their discography and interviews where Ride states he’s “a very private person — very few people I (he) calls friends — distrustful of all media”. Then going on to say he’s as degenerate as ‘ebola’ in the second verse continuing to perhaps shit on the fans once more saying they “ — wouldn't shut the fuck up, answered for their behaviour” — Suggesting their feelings as a band towards the fans, the public and the casual listener is divisive through their own fault of having intrinsic unpredictably, certainly one of the more schizophrenic tracks on the album overall.

‘Spikes’ is a very electro pop oriented track that could easily belong on Money Store’s B-Sides, paranoia; a common overarching theme in their music once more as ‘Spikes’ seems to hit this particular note again when Ride says he’s skidding using other allegorical terms of losing control, feeling like a vehicle he refers to as a ‘magnetic slab’ dissociating himself and the listener from reality on mental highways. Reminds me of the time I took LSD and drove on a winding highway for half an hour to the visuals of streaming light beams and otherworldly feelings of space travel in slow time — similar to the verse ‘sixty shots a second on a hexed clock’. In a sense the entire track invites chaos through mental instability, but it gets suddenly very occult when Ride talks about being all Helter Skelter and ‘on that Faust’, a folklore about an academic making pacts with the devil to receive unlimited knowledge in return for his soul. Abandoning all morality to achieve personal greatness, and of course; Charles Manson’s theories on ruling civilization. It’s not complete however without a crass line thrown in for absurdity like ‘I jizz snowmen’. Take from that what you will, yet it remains one of my favourite tracks on the album.

Another one of my favourites is ‘Eh’, a phrase I use to describe anything remotely dismissive all too often. A much more subdued track in it’s softer volumes along the lines of the more ambient tracks on ‘Government Plates’. Ride talks about his indifferences to fame and the mainstream, recanting encounters with celebrities, all self-absorbed people with heads up their own asses asking the common indignant phrase of “Do you know who I am?” to Ride who just shrugs all the shit off and says “Eh.” An astute way of expressing disregard to situations, and moving on. Similar to how we dismiss the value of comedic situations online when we just respond with “kk” or “lol.” On the flip side, the second verse injects more meaning to the word ‘eh’ elevating it to more than just a mere dismissal, in reference to the ‘Piss Christ’ line. A 1984 Photograph by Andres Serrano, depicting Jesus Christ in a jar of the artist’s urine; — a sacred liberation in the most profane delivery in how full of disgust the very two letters mean. Ride then backtracks and reaffirms that ‘MC Ride’ is just a character and people don’t know the real person, the reality & the character are both inside the lyrics but it’s up to the listener to determine who is whom. The verse is then followed by his indifference to Death Grips as a band ending, and he can go either way on welcoming fans into their music or outright discontinuing it, similar to the reference on ‘Hot Head’. A lot of the verses on this track are Ride constantly assuring himself and the listener that he’s a private person, and while he’s seemingly confused as to why he wants to make that clear on record. It’s almost to a point of aggravation for him, but by the end of the song he realizes the pointlessness of it all that perception and life will decay like ‘mummified worm in the sun’, feeling very anarchistic and nihilistic to humanity preferring to watch it burn to ashes, to the point of indifference towards his own suicide :— “catch me hanging from my noose like eh” — in turn vandalizing all his own work, until then he feels that prevalent tone of indifference and not feeding into what people want from him as an artist or a person. Really interesting lyrics to the entire song, and it’s the most subdued on the album as previously mentioned.

Similarly, I find myself also really attracted to the other subdued track on the album; ‘Trash’, mostly because I enjoy the themes behind the song and the infectious hook. Thematically from what I can interpret, which I touched upon in the introduction to my previous story about ‘Vaporwave’ was the recycling and constant uploads of low effort content that is in of itself: trash, or eventually turns into trash. Death Grips essentially saying what we upload and give to you is equivalent to any other upload to the internet. I can extrapolate the internet themes from the recycled use of ‘Trash’ for promotional use on places like twitter, the phone line on the ‘Astral Loans Network’ and also part of another Astral Loans post on instagram. The constant cycles of usage and uploads serve to create even more trash, trash begets trash. Lyrically it's a dumping ground for repeats and extended hooks crammed into just 3 minutes like crushing cars at a scrap heap. From the blaring horns at the beginning to the thumping balloon-like bass-lines of the mid-sections and the hopping notes of synths, it’s a cruise worthy song going along at a wavy pace, it’s not a fan favourite but I find myself drawn to it.

An additional interesting lyrical track is ‘Bb Poison’, which has a few winks and nods to the internet themes as ‘Trash’ does. The most hip-hop the album gets with bouncing vocals from Ride paralleling with the beat. Taking further jabs at the fandom with the entire track from the hook to the title in reference to their twitter handle @bbpoltergeist which the ‘bb’ is pronounced as ‘baby’, taking the handle and mocking fans with their obsessive behaviour to the point of subservience, this obsession being the metaphorical addictive poison that results in obedience. It is however, a behaviour they encourage, for once giving the fans a pat on the back for their erratic attitude as Zach Hill states in his Pitchfork interview (*Embedded above). Further referencing their twitter handle with the beginning of the first verse with; — “where’s your heat at? It won’t lit” indicating perhaps a creative decline in themselves specifically Zach who’s mentioned in the outro, but trying to find it a spark once more by retracing creative points like The Money Store with the entire album. Regardless they know the fans will scramble for whatever drop of ‘dimes’ they bring to the fans, again more hints to The Money Store with the album cover of a master and his/her submissive server. Obedience being a common thread throughout the whole track between the BDSM relationship the fans and Death Grips have. Final note, did they seriously put “Notice me, senpai” in the bridge lyric? I've never seen a band more conscious of their audience, I don’t know whether to laugh or seize up in a confused fit of second-hand embarrassment.

The following track ‘Three Bedrooms in a Good Neighborhood’ is the favorite among fans for good reason, with one of the best instrumentals they’ve made yet with how dizzyingly catchy it is and impactful lyrics which put into story formation, a rarity amongst the usual first person oriented Death Grips tracks makes it a real standout. Sometimes I’d catch myself constantly repeating the hooks with — “nylons on/side bitches don’t/ your table through my head/my body through your bed.” Part of the concept of the track as a whole being a seedy sexual underbelly to a happy suburban life which almost feels like a nightmare of an idea to Ride as he pictures them burning “like a margarita made out of wood — ” part of this happy home lifestyle idea includes relationships which Ride seems detached from as he sees each woman as ‘solar panels’ in his life. Energizing and appealing at first but then dispensable and cheap like a 30 cent solar panel. Slipping back into the occult themes once more with references to tarot cards, a blank one to be specific in which Ride can forge his own destiny by choice, that choice being to break open ADX, a supermax prison in Florence containing the world’s more dangerous male criminals implying he’ll be an agent of chaos upon the suburbs, and a fortune teller akin to Zoltar (Something I can only think of Tom Hanks in ‘Big’) stealing away women from partners with the allure of his magic genitals. Pretty absurd claim. But it seems to be about this madman character roaming the neighbourhood for carving out chaos within himself and others, like a serial killer on the loose feeling nothing when acting out his desires purging people who rely on technology and with the repeated callbacks to Manson, and referencing Albert Fish in the final verse, who serial killed children and was known as a rapist and cannibal in 1936 would make the most sense in context to this overarching story.

I’ll quickly touch upon ‘Ring a Bell’, considered the low point of the album, lyrically coming across as a bit of a lull but I really enjoy the hard hitting distorted guitars on the verses and the warped guitars to the chorus. Instancing many times in my head when I think of this album or when I’m daydreaming, but it’s a relatively short song at just over two minutes. So detractors would be pleased hearing the only supposed ‘blemish’ on this album is albeit short at best.

Proving again once more they write extremely addictive hooks comes the rap piss-take ‘80808’, giving listeners another ear worm to combat as Ride gloats about his flow and style, perhaps taunting other vocalists by playing a sarcastic-like character who’s obsessed with how many bars he can spit and followers he has preaching to copycats saying if they learn from him they can get better at their craft. It all feels very tongue in cheek right down to the title with 808 claps & beats in hip-hop akin to five cents in your pocket; they’re dime-a-dozen & weightless.

The album closes similar to Jenny Death with a very rock powered closer in ‘Bottomless Pit’ which may not be as memorable as other album closers in their discography, what I can give this particular track credit for over those other closers is that it possess a more explosive, faster paced quality to it than something like ‘Artificial Death in the West’ on NLDW. It also roundabout connects itself with the opening of the album by reinforcing that aggression that carries the album to cap it off with. Equally aggressive is the lyrics with carrying the most disgustingly aggressive sexual lyrics yet throughout the album, although the entirety of the album is not without it’s overly sexual themes on the contrary it's one of the main pillars of topics that the album possesses. With such lines as ‘I’ll fuck you in half’ and feasting on your body, the whole track feels like one big guilty hate-fuck on your most coveted sexual slave introducing ‘gagballs’ and other bondage gear into a fiendishly marvellous sexual relationship up until the verse;- ‘My cum hatch in you’ which takes upon more sinister intent of ejaculating pure evil into a womb. Similar to the Alien in ‘Alien’ impregnating hosts and hatching extraterrestrial evil inside the victim. This track is the portrait of a sex-crazed bondage fiend where he fucks anything that moves, from his sub-woofer to his sexual slave serving them with his sexual ‘fix’. Man, what an album, pure Death Classic, bitch.