The Money Store – Death Grips (Epic Records)

The album of 2012 is The Money Store by Death Grips.  It’s a chaotic, turbulent and an uncomfortable listen on first digestion. Perfectly representing a year of  financial and economic uncertainty, political unrest across the world and yadda yadda. Oh yeah and the Mayan Apocalypse…

Death Grips have had a pretty mad year. Getting signed to Major Label Epic Records then getting subsequently dropped for giving away their album for free on file-sharing sites behind the labels back. This band epitomise punk subversiveness  and self-destruction as exemplified by the outlandish album artwork.

As a novice/fraudulent music critic its’ hard for me to verbalise my thoughts when it comes to why I like a band. “Sound that” is usually adequate for most. The good thing about  Death Grips is probably nobody knows what they’re talking about when describing them. Probably not even the band.

The Money Store is like smashing a light bulb into your wrist. Or musical MDMA if you prefer, immediately dangerous sounding and infectious.

It’s a stretch to call this genre of music anything, least of all electro/rap/rock so I won’t bother. Basically
it’s an angry sounding black dude shouting over a barrage of sound effects, samples and a relentless wave of percussion. And it’s fucking great.

The best three songs are the stuttering, bass-beating call-to-arms “Get Got”,  the soulful, cruising (in the context of the album anyway) “I’ve Seen Footage”  and the paranoid, relentless album closer “Hacker.

Tags: 2012, death grips, experimental, music, rap, review