John Vs. “No Love Deep Web” by Death Grips

(I’m not posting the cover, but not because I object to it. It’s because I don’t know where anyone will be when reading it, and it’s unfair to assume it’ll be somewhere without prying eyes. I’m also not posting the “censored” cover because fuck a cop-out.)

I thought I had nothing left to say about Death Grips after witnessing one of the few shows they did for The Money Store. That experience fucked my life up for a few months as I had to compartmentalize and come to terms with everything they showed on those screens. I thought by making the front of the website that fucking jacket I wouldn’t budge on that stance. And then No Love Deep Web came out, and a bunch of crazy shit came out with it. I have theories. Here they are.

“No representation is better than misrepresentation.”

This is a phrase that Death Grips has been throwing around in interviews, about how they’re approaching dealing with press and attention as the band takes off. If there’s a teachable moment in this whole debacle, it’s that this is the right approach to take. Even with no representation but their own, people are getting it fucked up. Saying they’re sell outs, fakes, they’re not punk, or whatever credibility attack consumers prefer. This all misses the larger points here.

This idea that they at some point were punk is crazy. It’s a value system being assigned to them that has nothing to do with what they’re making or what they want to do. Not entirely unlike the concept of selling out, or that they’re fake. It has been wildly, amazingly, HowThe FuckAreYouMissingThisly clear that they are making art that is NOT about the time we currently live in, or the world we currently live in. All three records are illustrating a worst case scenario of mankind in the grip of technology. It’s near-future science fiction, by their own admission. It wasn’t “real” to begin with, because that wasn’t the point.

I mean, they had an alternate reality game. They are trying to tell a fucking story, and it’s being lost in the politics of image and authenticity online. So it’s fine for them to blur reality and their fiction to promote the record, but in regards to the actual release, it’s taboo. That is a hell of a thing to broadcast, and if that’s the thing that causes you to stop listening to Death Grips you weren’t fucking getting it anyways so you’re better off.

I’ve also been seeing shit about B L A C K I E in regards to this. I’ve been a fan for about a year now, ironically since he was supposed to open for Death Grips in San Diego before Ride blew his voice up recording The Money Store. So as B L A C K I E’s new album Gen (which, by the way, is the fucking shit and you should listen to it) got released, a lot of the press around that had comments like “if you think Death Grips is hard, check out B L A C K I E!” And now in the wake of this, I’ve seen people a rising sentiment of “fuck Death Grips, they bit from B L A C K I E.”

I feel the same way about this wave of comparisons as I did about the last one: It’s bullshit. They’re talking about the same concept, of freedom versus technology and civilization. The difference is that Death Grips is showing the future of someone who couldn’t pull away, and B L A C K I E is recording himself pulling away. There’s no love in the world Death Grips is warning about, and it’s ultimately all love in B L A C K I E’s music. Okay? Okay.

Now, the record.

Clearly, it’s a departure from Exmilitary and The Money Store. It was a sound that was hinted at in less appreciated songs on those two records, Culture Shock and Fuck That, but developed to the point that it can stand as a full record instead of just standing out as deviations in the rest of the record. What emerges in this approach is a much broader sound profile that still sounds as Death Grips as anything else. The low end focus is to upset rather than assault.

Suspending personal opinions on that aesthetic change, the question that needs to be asked is “why change?” What does this record have to say that the other records couldn’t say? The answer is simple: weakness. This is a dramatic shift in what they’ve been putting out to say the least: Exmilitary’s overwhelming, vile production and tone was enough to put them on the map basically on sound profile alone, and The Money Store pulls back on the violating peaks to put more force on the moment-to-moment music. The hooks sink deep, the sound is all memorable, and the aggression is all there. It’s all very aggressive and pointed. This unfortunately means that, as soon as people perceived cracks in this image, they might turn against it since it wasn’t “hard” anymore.

Here’s a rhetorical question: what death only makes you stronger? And in this question is the entire point.

“The name of our band alludes to a technological stalemate, a war of attrition that will exact its price on our bodies.”
Interview with The Quietus, 7/14/11

“We conceived Death Grips as its own entity. We wanted to create something that was much larger than ourselves. We almost wanted to take ourselves out of the equation to create this person that was separate from what our day-to-day lives are. “
Interview with The Stool Pidgeon, 4/23/12

“The process we’re trying to describe is acceleration. We see all things spiraling to a point where the elements of chaos become uncontrollable; systems shattering.”
Interview with LA Record, 4/30/12

“If you think of the records as a trinity, this one will be the point on the top of the triangle.”
Interview with The Skinny, 5/02/12

“If The Money Store was in a dream state, No Love is when you wake up and all the things about reality are right there in front of your face and you can’t avoid it.”

“I mean, if you visualise The Money Store as this curtain that has this amazing setting in a room, there’s this big curtain and we raise that up. It’s very vibrant and it’s got more of a pop iconic thing going on inThe Money Store. You’re looking out of this curtain and then No Love would be if someone came and ripped this thing down and behind it there was this whole other dimension that went on infinitely. It’s definitely not an ending. It’s more like discovering a tunnel behind.”
Interview with AQNB, 4/23/12

In case this isn’t coalescing, here’s the binding agent: this album couldn’t have been anything else, because it’s the fear they’ve been trying to explain all along. They’ve been working at establishing this world and this character from the beginning of Exmilitary. “Beware” is one of the clearest portraits of this that they have, of this ruinous id creature created from the same stuff that’s made an idyllic consumer society. Hermeticism (constantly referenced in their music) summarizes this as “as above, so below,” and what else bellows through Beware but “I am below, so far below.”

Put bluntly: Exmilitary introduces the character. The Money Store is the rise, and No Love Deep Web is the fall. Everything that made the character invincible on the other two records is consuming him and undermining him here. Base desires have warped further (this can’t be stressed enough: this record is fucking GROSS. There is a lot of just sexual threat from MC Ride, and it’s about as terrifying as that reads). The seemingly unlimited digital power on display during “Blackjack” and “Hacker” has been turned around in songs like “Come Up And Get Me” and “Deep Web.” From seeing the “Lost Boys” to getting lost in “No Love.” How are you supposed to articulate something like “Artificial Death In The West” with blaring, impossible sound? The record needs the sound profile it has in order to complete the trinity, to show off what’s behind the curtain. It was never supposed to be affirming or strengthening: it’s a hollowing.

WINNER: “No Love Deep Web” by Death Grips

WHY: In the past, they set out to establish a world, and succeeded. Then they set out to establish a character, and succeeded. Now they’re setting out to tell the story, and I feel they’ve succeeded again.

Also, I am terrified to see the videos that will end up attached to this.