The Money Store… Sounds a bit like this

Review: Death Grips – The Money Store

Published on May 11th, 2012 | Jonny Abrams

There’s been much online debate as to how exactly to bracket the abrasive sound of this Sacramento three-piece, suggesting that many people still feel they need to understand where a piece of music comes from before deciding for themselves whether it’s any good or not. Rocksucker would like to shove forward ‘purplemonkeydishwasher-pop’. What does it mean? Anything you want it to, baby.

“Get Got” kicks things off here with a warm, blaring electro stomp of a production, the shifts into double-time of which don’t at all throw off the cool, collected rap, which after this track is discarded for Stefan Burnett’s psychotic ranting.

For the most part this is compelling – for instance, there’s the berserk space-grime of “Hustle Bones”, which manages to sound like KRS-One and Antipop Consortium going insane while riding motorbikes, the whirring, pumped-up “I’ve Seen Footage”, the utterly unreal “System Blower” (speaker-blower, more like) and the tremendously rumbling, shouty, futuristic march of “Punk Weight”.

There even seems to be a furtive Beatles reference secreted about the jittery cartoon dubstep of “Double Helix” (“Blue Jay Way, don’t be long” – or at least that’s what it sounds like).

However, that smooth opening rap of “Get Got” could have done with a spot of replication across the album. Within the manageable running time – only one of the thirteen tracks here lasts beyond four minutes – Burnett’s often indecipherable vocal attacks don’t quite stray into headache-causing territory, but Death Grips’ next album could perhaps benefit from mixing it up a bit.

Rocksucker says: Three and a Half Quails out of Five!

a quail a quail a quail half a quail

The Money Store is out now on Columbia. For more information, please visit thirdworlds.net or www.facebook.com/deathgripz

Artists: death grips

About the Author

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.