For a moment, forget about the cock on the cover: The most arresting and totemic image of this week's Death Grips debacle and/or coup actually arrived about five hours before the brazen California trio released its second major-label LP, NO LOVE DEEP WEB, online, for free and under an anything-goes Creative Commons license. Shirtless so as to expose the web of tattoos on his body, Death Grips frontman MC Ride stands with his back to the camera, his middle fingers foisted high and a cigarette tucked into his left hand. But he's balancing on a balcony, high up in what appears to be a rather well-furbished neighborhood, his toes hanging just over the ledge. He's tempting fate and taking the chance to make the strongest statement possible, even if he (and the photographer overhead) had to risk a fall to the death to get it. In fact, the only incident that might have given the riot-act release of NO LOVE DEEP WEB more currency in the media would have been an accidental death. At the very least, it would have kept at bay the conspiracy theorists calling Death Grips' Monday move a publicity stunt performed in conjunction with Epic Records. "Too soon," you'd say.
At the risk of appearing moribund, that phenomenon of big stunts and instant exits largely defines NO LOVE DEEP WEB, not just in release style but also in musical makeup. These 13 tracks thrive on paranoia and aggression, feelings threaded together by the sense that everything could be ending right now. With his voice squeezed above a heavy thud and electro chirp, MC Ride rolls the dice again, as he did on the balcony's ledge: "My life on a limb about to break." Across these 46 minutes, Ride creates a series of memento mori scenarios (and even goes so far as to invoke that phrase) and dares them to destroy him. As he puts it, "Fuck this world/ Fuck this body."
The record's most obvious example is "World of Dogs", which opens with the repetitive hook "It's all suicide" over Zach Hill's death-jazz drums. Crushed by its own quest for redemption, the grueling pace and noose-necked premise-- "Die with me/ Blow out the lights, take your life/ Ride the falling sky with me"-- make the song more grim than most black metal in 2012. The hook of "Lil Boy" is an invitation to burn brighter and faster, while the mortality-obsessed and especially corrosive "Lock Your Doors" includes a falling-from-life scream convincing enough to be sampled from a horror film. A minute later, Ride pictures the flame of a candle like the sand slipping through the hourglass: "Light the candle, burn the wax/ Before me dies, in scorch uprise/ Can't deny it, no way back." It's as if NO LOVE DEEP WEB was written and recorded knowing that its ultimate fate would either kill or catapult Death Grips. Essentially, the risk becomes the biggest reward.
After all, Death Grips' rage for some unnamed and very big system is written all across these tracks, and not just in the horror-house din of "Lock Your Doors" or the militaristic march of "No Love". MC Ride weaves networks of anxious and sometimes fatalistic visions; his phone's been tapped, and phantom footsteps sound just outside the door. At one point, he's stuck in a closed-circuit surveillance system, and he's the only one who can't watch. "Tongue cut out the mouth of reason, and chucked off the river's edge," he manages in one particularly manic span, again acknowledging the end waiting just at the other side of the precipice.
He lashes out, becoming the bully with a vivid imagination and an aggressive lexicon. "Lil Boy" taunts the effete, while "No Love" (likely and hilariously Epic's would-have-been "single") teases the bloated form of stereotypical industry executives: "Fuck do you do? Fuck a man with hips for hulu." Ride buys up guns, threatens homicide, evades the law, pursues his prey, and, by his own admission, teeters toward the edge of crazy. He's most fierce on "Deep Web", an industrial-strength boomer that finds him ready to fight and flee. "I'm the coat hanger in your man's vagina," he stammers, unleashing a line vague enough to offend most everyone. It's the sort of thing you could imagine him shouting from the top of the balcony Sunday evening, spreading the bad news like heavy mortar fire.
With his schizoid panoply of voices and hyperlinked lyrics, MC Ride remains Death Grips' fountainhead and most polarizing figure. But the production of Zach Hill and Flatlander lives on the same line of danger as their leader. They afford Ride perfect platforms for his effrontery. Closer "Artificial Death in the West", for instance, is the longest track here, pushing toward the six-minute mark. Ride raps like he's stuck between failure and the future, so the music matches those "hopeless premonitions" with synthesizers suggesting krautrock tripping toward its own oblivion. "Hunger Games" explores a similar fascination with the end while the beat ruptures into ill-shaped bits. It's the sound of a troubled mind trying not to fall apart.
Loud and punishing, the sonics of NO LOVE DEEP WEB suit MC Ride's mix of hysteria, rage and exhaustion. Perhaps Epic has concerns about Death Grips' ability to make a marketable record; as Death Grips are arguably the most challenging act on a major label right now (or last week, at least), that much is founded. But their ability to integrate every part into cohesive tracks-- in other words, to marry their sound to their fury-- is rare. After a string of shows in the spring, Death Grips canceled all subsequent dates to finish NO LOVE DEEP WEB. That's a questionable career move, but the effort and attention show here at every turn.
Death Grips exist within a cloud of hyperbole, from the maximized minimalism of their savage beats and the extreme unrest of their barked lyrics to the escalating gauntlet of their album covers and their blooming disregard of industry standards. To summarize, NO LOVE DEEP WEB-- a record ostensibly paid for by a label owned by one of the biggest companies in the world but released for free on the Internet-- features an erect penis inked with the title in sloppy Sharpie script on its cover. One of its most undeniable hooks reads, "She shoot pussy through your chest, you die." Everything about this trio seems extreme.
Especially when perceived as posturing for publicity, those appearances make it difficult to realize and articulate the issues that Death Grips make so urgent. But this is a trio of itinerant transgressors, making impossible demands on the boundaries of rap and punk and rock'n'roll and questioning to the core not only what constitutes a proper release but also the standard models for turning music into money. For now, at least, NO LOVE DEEP WEB is an extraordinary outlier in most every sense, an album with no definitive home or home turf aside from the millions who will likely download it.
So, are Death Grips publicity-crazed assholes who never saw a situation that couldn't be turned into a stunt, or are they real-life renegades who infiltrated the industry only to know they'd soon rip through its bowels? Frankly, at a time when what's for dinner can become a cause for publicizing yourself, and when one industry might shut down another to restore historically accepted order, they're nothing if not a lot of both. For the second time in one year, both on a large label and on their own, they've released a record ruthless and rewarding enough to animate that image.
