Turntable legend DJ Spooky is neither a novice when it comes to genre mashing nor a stranger to collaborating with other musicians. A prominent figure in turntablism for the past decade, Spooky has remixed Nick Cave, Metallica, and a score of others, and he's worked with a wide range of hip-hop and indie rock's biggest stars. For his 2004 release Celestial Mechanix: The Blue Series Mastermix, he fused jazz and hip-hop, remixing tracks from selections from Thirsy Ear's Blue Series. Now, a year later, he's teamed up with thrash metal legend Dave Lombardo, most famous for his work with Slayer, but also skin-pounder for Fantômas, Grip, Inc., and one-time member of Testament. As if that pair wasn't odd enough, also along for the ride are Public Enemy mouth-piece Chuck D, Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid, and Meat Beat Manifesto's Jack Dangers. The result is the appropriately titled Drums of Death.
The tracks are pretty evenly split between frenetic, drum-heavy instrumentals and guitar-driven hip-hop. The hip-hop songs are the stronger, especially "Assisted Suicide", which features Dälek. The three other hip-hop tracks here are Public Enemy remakes: "Brother's Gonna Work it Out", "B-Side Wins Again", and "Public Enemy #1", all of which are beefed up by Lombardo's mechanical throb and crunchy guitar work from Reid and Dangers. The slice-and-dice beats and throbbing guitar are a perfect match for Chuck D's seething vocal delivery. Luckily, DJ Spooky's spinning and Dangers' production keep all of these tracks from coming off like so many failed, meatheaded rap-metal hybrids. These are hip-hop songs first and foremost, with the rock elements used along with samples and keyboards to create texture beneath the lyrical attack.
Unfortunately, the instrumentals aren't as interesting. Lombardo's drumming is always impressive, but on many of these tracks it's the only thing that stands out. Of the instrumentals, "Kultur Krieg" and "Terra Nulius (Cyborg Rebellion on Colony Planet Zyklon 15)" are generic thrash metal with tinny production. The jazzier, illbient tracks, such as "Metatron" and "A Darker Shade of Bleak" are a little more inspired, but they still don't offer quite enough creative ideas to push them to the front.
The exception is "Incipit Zarathustra", which mixes Lombardo's aforementioned lightening-fast drumming with Spooky's equally impressive turntable skills, mixing in samples from, among other things, the Beastie Boys and Atari games. It's the perfect outlet for both of their talents, which they're both clearly overflowing with. As one of the more compelling songs in this collection, "Incipit Zarathustra" just goes to show how unfortunate it is that Drums of Death is so uneven.
