California Experimental Hip-Hop outfit, Death Grips, released their third studio LP to the public on Nov. 13. At a time where the silhouette paragons of primitive yet prophetic raps and chaotic yet technical beats have absolutely nothing to prove, they come together to produce, what I adamantly decree to be, the most “heartbreaking experience in music this year.”

It would be an insult to these artists (as well as metaphysics) to attempt to tersely wrap their raps and beats into aphorisms and stanzas — but I will try anyway. Death Grips is a band where the context surrounding them is just as significant as the music they release.

After the band, consisting of the cacophonous MC Ride on vocals, the mysterious Flatlander on keyboards and visual art, and the acclaimed Zach Hill, who you may know through his excellent contribution to the math rock legend Hella, on drums and programming, released their mixtape, Ex Military, that featured songs like “Guillotine” and “Takyon (Death Yon),” they threw a bolder into the sea of horror-core rap that resonated ripples that are still admired today while contemporaries such as Odd Future only skipped pebbles over the surface.

This infamous mixtape left fans and skeptics alike foaming at the mouth as their music flirted with elements of industrial hip hop, EDM and just plain noise while being battered with Zach Hill’s remarkable drumming and MC Ride’s tortured vocals; which I can only describe as him swallowing the microphone and bellowing into it like Kraftwerk would do to their old school vocoders.

With all this anticipation of a full length record label debut, all underground eyes peered from the sewers to watch what was to come next from the low-key trio. It seemed to come out of a providential happening gone wrong when Death Grips released, what is now possibly their most acclaimed album, “The Money Store.”

This release was extremely controversial as the band uploaded their album in full onto YouTube, which violated their contract with their past label, Epic Records, thus resulting in a prompt dismissal from the label. Apart from that, the album showcased some oddly catchy singles such as “The Fever (Aye Aye)” which sounds like an incarcerated serial murderer of the highest caliber rapping at the scene of an escape from an extreme criminal captivity facility with sirens blaring and pounding percussion that provides an intense foundation for sporadic and vicious lyrics by MC Ride full of morbid and morose imagery.

Shortly after, a weird crash on 4chan foreshadowed the coming of Death Grips’ second LP “NO LOVE DEEP WEB.” It featured an encrypted message that, after punctilious decrypting, revealed the title and subsequent release date of their sophomore studio album. This album displayed probably Death Grips’ most intense performance sonically and lyrically with the opener “COME UP AND GET ME” featuring a rumbling bassline and MC Ride screaming at the top of his lungs until his voice cracks like Kendrick Lamar at the finishing of “Rigamortis.”

After two seminal albums in 2012, Death Grips is at the top of their game with bragging rights and nothing to prove. Needless to say after listening to this album, in the words of MC Ride, “it’s such a long way down” they have fallen from their last release, as “Government Plates” was somewhat disappointing.

The context of this album included a random release on YouTube and soundcloud of their album despite having statements from the band that the release will be in 2014. The opening sounded like a rehash of The Fever with its sirens, but this time it pierced my ears in a bad way, accompanied with some cheap glass breaking sound effects which attenuated a rather impressive song that showcased one of MC Ride’s most intense performances yet and an incredible beat with Dubstep-like basslines and tamping drums.

Secondly, probably one of my least favorite tracks on this album, “Feels Like A Wheel” suffers from the cancer that a plethora of these tracks do; redundancy and monotony. One of the strengths that Death Grips has always had was the sampling of MC Ride’s vocals on a track but on “Government Plates,” this strength has been flipped into a weakness, rendering the songs extremely repetitive and thus forgettable — one thing that Death Grips has never been.

For every highlight, such as “Anne Bonny” with its gorgeous synth arpeggios and “TWO HEAVENS” with its technical proficiency, there is a song equally as boring that just brings me to declare that this album literally caused me physical cardiovascular pain.

This album left me hardly anything to take, not even laughter. However, Death Grips track record is so radiantly beautiful, that it compensates for this blemish. I strongly encourage you to listen to their preceding works in effort not to turn you off from an otherwise extremely worthwhile band.

2.5/5