clipping. is an industrial hip-hop trio from Los Angeles. clipping.’s frontman, Daveed Diggs, is better known for his roles of Thomas Jefferson and Marquis de Lafayette in the smash hit Broadway musical “Hamilton.”

While never breaking into the mainstream of rap music, clipping.’s unique blend of industrial music, walls of harsh noise and hip-hop have gained them a small but devoted following in the underground hip-hop scene. The group first drew attention with their 2014 album “CLPPNG,” an album that divided critics but was adored by fans for its dark and rough aesthetic. clipping. returned with “Visions of Bodies Being Burned” on Oct. 23, and what a return it is.

The album begins, appropriately, with “Intro.” Once listeners press play, they are met with a suffocating, echoing bass drum that pulses loudly throughout the two-and-a-half minute track. The drum moves closer and closer toward the listener’s eardrums as the song builds with ambient noise that sounds like it came straight from a horror movie.

The unsettling ambience builds into Diggs’ vocals, rapping manically about the hopelessness of running from one’s death. In classic fashion for the group, the track ends with Diggs uttering “It’s clipping.” before cutting into a wall of harsh noise.

The album moves along from one highlight to another, with “Say The Name.” A pitched down voice raps “Candlesticks in the dark, visions of bodies being burned,” which serves as the chorus for the song. Diggs raps about elements and ambience from ’90s horror movies with an anti-racist slant. He uses grotesque imagery to illustrate racial and class divides that exist across the world.

Later in the tracklist, there is “Something Underneath.” A smothering synth chord kicks off the song with Diggs jumping on to the track a few seconds later. The lyrics tackle a cataclysmic natural event that wipes out the population of the Earth.

Diggs’ delivery on the track is skittering and manic, rapping energetically over an increasingly glitchy beat. Diggs switches rhythms in the song seemingly at the snap of a finger, but it never feels jarring or out of place. The song flows beautifully, with Diggs’ delivery changing rapidly with the beat.

“Visions of Bodies Being Burned” is full of exceeding triumphs, with songs like “Pain Everyday,” “Make Them Dead” and “Enlacing” serving as soaring highlights of the record. Some songs, however, seem somewhat out of place in the tracklist.

The vast majority of the album keeps the same tone: dark, unsettling, mysterious. Songs like “’96 Neve Campbell” and “Looking Like Meat” kind of disrupt the flow of the project. This may have to do with both of these songs featuring rappers other than Diggs. These features, while good on their own, impede the very specific mood the trio works to create on the rest of the album.

In its entirety, “Visions of Bodies Being Burned” is a monolithic record that is uncompromisingly raw, intense and dark. Fans of harsher music, horror movies or anyone looking to get into industrial hip-hop should definitely give this album a listen.

Final verdict: 8.5/10