Death Grips - Exmilitary (Self-released, April 25 2011; Sacramento, CA, USA).
The pleasant lie of a neat narrative, why that's not a bad thing, and why Yeezus is a bad album
Sometimes it’s hard, when listening to a groundbreaking piece of music so epochal that at least within its subgenre it feels like a line in the sand between BCE and CE, to take yourself back to when that line in the sand was drawn. Sometimes that’s even true when you were there, and remember the time before the impact. This isn’t one of those times.
I missed the initial release of Exmilitary, but the excitement around the release of Black Google - the band-approved collection of stems that helped these songs find their way into both remixes and memes over the next decade - five months later carried with it enough buzz that I wanted to investigate. I knew drummer Zach Hill from his work with Hella and Marnie Stern, and was curious to see his name involved in what was ostensibly a rap mixtape. I paused what I was listening to, opened up a new tab, and proceeded to have my mind blown. Few lines in recorded music go as hard as “I light my torch and burn it / I am the beast I worship”. Few bands would make that the hook on a song, and only one did so on the first track of their debut. Death Grips arrived fully formed, and carved the line in the sand as if they wanted, to steal a phrase, to see the earth bleed.
Of course, Death Grips didn’t invent abrasive, experimental rap music (if that’s even what this was). The same late 90s that brought us the shiny suit era also brought us an array of harsh reactions against it; most successfully in the short term DMX and in the long term Eminem, but they were the controlled opposition (as much as DMX was controlled by anything except his own inward-focused rage and sorrow). The underground was throwing up all sorts of weirdness around the turn of the century, from Dälek’s industrial paranoia to cLOUDDEAD’s avant-garde web and the post-apocalyptic sci-fi soundscapes summoned by El-P to clatter under intra-apocalyptic dispatches from Company Flow and Cannibal Ox. What Death Grips did was make people outside of the core underground hip hop heads sit up and take notice, and do so loudly enough that those inside the house soon noticed and began to respond to the noise that was coming from outside.
I’ve long wondered whether it’s right to think of Death Grips as a hip-hop group at all. The obvious answer is yes, of course they are: they’re a dude rapping (Stefan Burnett, better known as MC Ride) over drums and samples arranged by the other two dudes (Andy Morin, formerly known as Flatlander, and Zach Hill, mostly just known by his government name). They even stick to the black guy on vocals and white guy(s) on production that was so traditional of the mixtape era that Exmilitary arrived at, although we didn’t know it at the time, the end of1. But most of that is in a sense so much window dressing. The band’s combative, in-your-face approach, their drummer, and even their subversive prankster relationship with their label and the press all painted them as arguably more punk than hip-hop. Their live performances helped to cement that - few drummers I’ve ever seen live have smashed as many sticks during a performance as Hill did when I was lucky enough to see Death Grips play MONA FOMA in Hobart in early 2013. The biggest problem with trying to say definitively whether Death Grips are a rap group with a punkish approach or a punk group which uses rap sonics and aesthetics is that it is an unavoidably racialised one, and carries with it the value judgements that ideology has bolted to each of those labels through the last nearly half century. I find the latter more useful for understanding their place in the musical ecosystem of the early 2010s, but I think any definitive “Death Grips are (x) genre” statement would get you laughed at by the band.
Speaking of the musical ecosystem of the early 2010s… do you think Kanye West also remembers where he was the first time he heard Exmilitary? I don’t think it’s possible to pretend that Yeezus (2013) wasn’t inspired by what Death Grips were doing on that first trilogy of records (completed by the more hook-laden The Money Store and the even more abrasive No Love Deep Web the following year). It’s not just that it’s “abrasive, experimental rap music” as I labelled Death Grips above. It’s the specific way in which that abrasion is used on the record, and especially the way the blown-out samples are used as signifiers of an experimentation that’s betrayed as illusory by the specific precedents set by lower-profile contemporaries in the few years before its release (an issue amplified by the way the record uses figures of the then-ascendant and publicly threatening Chicago drill scene in a way that feels like props). Yeezus is a record which, and I know I stand in a real minority here, ranks to me as maybe the most overrated record of the decade. Its reputation, particularly among a certain type of extremely online Kanye fan who didn’t see any issue with his hard-right turn in the late 2010s, is part of why I wrote that third paragraph above where I labelled Death Grips as “abrasive, experimental rap music”. That was my paranoidly pre-emptive desire to not be accused of the same revisionism in favour of a record I find compelling that frustrates me so much about the online discourse around Yeezus.
I have said elsewhere that in being an attempt to strip things down to bare bones and recapture a feeling of raw aggression following a well-received but orchestrally indulgent record that fails in its attempt because of the gilded cage that artist’s wealth and success has built around them, the most natural predecessor to Yeezus is Metallica’s St. Anger (2003), a position that has enraged every Kanye fan who understands the reference. I should note that I do not here mean “Kanye fan” as a pejorative. While I haven’t enjoyed a song by him since “Selah” (2019) or a full-length since The Life of Pablo (2016), his run of his first five records stands as one of the best and most influential opening salvos in 21st century rap history. My frustration with Yeezus is, in part, one of disappointment, and of seeing someone I knew could do better not only not doing better but being told by sycophants and yes-men that this mess which mistook sloppiness for raw edge in fact was that better.
St. Anger, of course, drew as its inspiration the nü-metal which was already passé by the time of its release; a subgenre with its own (only mostly deserved) malignment that left Metallica’s fans much more primed to mock their emperor for his nudity in a way that Kanye’s fans were not. If you followed rock or especially metal critical discourse around that era, then groups like Rage Against The Machine, Body Count or especially Anthrax, whose jokey releases like “I’m The Man” (1987) and perfectly balanced jokey/serious cover then collaboration with Public Enemy on “Bring the Noise'' (1991), were constantly being asked whether they felt guilt or took responsibility for the rise of nü-metal. It was deeply silly. Most artists felt that way, and eventually the press took the hint and stopped asking. All this is to say that Exmilitary shouldn’t be blamed for Yeezus - or claim the credit for it, if you’re a Yeezus defender - but that the role of Death Grips in reaching out to a fanbase beyond rap by reframing the tools of the rap artist in a fresh and subversive way should be acknowledged and respected when thinking about big career moves by those watching.
We should probably also talk about Anthony Fantano here. I’ve never been the biggest Needle Drop obsessive, less because of any issue I have with Fantano (I find myself in agreement with him more often than not) but simply because neither the video review format in general nor his specific approach have ever quite gelled with me. If he released transcripts of his videos I’d probably be reading them daily. But, as I mentioned in “With A Whimper” a few months ago, Fantano moved from written to video reviews in the late 00s, and was ahead of a wave that many of the biggest and best-resourced music journalism outfits are still paddling to catch up with. He deserves his success, is what I’m saying. And maybe it’s a product of my being there, online and plugged into the meta-discourse around music journalism in the early 10s, but the rise of Death Grips and Fantano seem, in my mind, to be inextricably linked. He was an early backer of the group, not just giving them positive reviews - including one of Exmilitary that not just rewarded the album with an 8/10, exceptionally high in that era of the channel, but did so just ten days after it dropped, demonstrating a finger well and truly on the pulse - but as the mythology around the band and their oddball excursions developed, breathlessly reporting on their latest developments. The style of music appreciation Fantano exhibits and seems to encourage his followers to also adopt, one of fearless omnivory and if not always an uncritical enjoyment then a genuine respect for experimental tendencies, also suited the rise of Death Grips: here was a band that was just at home in hardcore punk circles as they were in underground hip-hop (that is to say, barely at all, but they’d gotten in and nobody was willing to kick them out). It’s only fitting that Exmilitary’s follow up, The Money Store, would provide the channel with its first ever - and until Swans dropped To Be Kind more than two years later, its only - 10/10 perfect score, a landmark moment in the mythology of The Needle Drop. I agree with the melon here - I think the increased hook craft on TMS edges it above Exmilitary as Death Grips’ best record, and everything since has been a bit of a decline of varying levels of steepness.
None of this is why I actually wanted to write about Exmilitary today. Rather, in the vein of one of the conspiratorial pinboard-and-string ranters that Morin might use as a sample, I started noticing patterns, connections, meaning in the record. There’s a mythology around the late 60s that sees it as the end of an era of innocence2, of the counterculture of the summer of love revealing itself as something much darker. This narrative is a lie. Of course it is - it’s a narrative. But it makes for a fun story, which really is the point of them. The heel turn is oft pointed to taking place during the infamous Altamont Speedway Free Festival on 6 December 1969, the one with three deaths and the Hell’s Angels on security detail immortalised in the documentary film Gimme Shelter released the next year. The Rolling Stones song which gave that doco its name, also released in 1969, provides a pretty good soundtrack to the vibe of darkness lurking just underneath all the gilded sunshine, waiting for its chance to surface. What struck me on listening to Exmilitary earlier this week was how much it draws from the mythology and narrative of that era.
It was the Arthur Brown sample on “Lord of the Game'' that first grabbed my attention. The provocative live performances of Brown, thought of sometimes as a prophet of the end of the hippie era, such as stripping naked and setting his head on fire are certainly the sorts of things that would cause a band who shot an early promo pic with MC Ride standing on the edge of a tall building as if about to jump and whose third album, No Love Deep Web, featured an erect penis with the album title sharpie’d on it. So too was Brown’s lyrical concept, not just of a fiery hell but of embodying a satanic figure himself, an appropriate reference point for the band with that opening chorus of “I light my torch and burn it / I am the beast I worship”. The term “beast” specifically for such an object of awe is strongly associated with Alister Crowley, whose Ordo Templi Orientis was reestablished - when else? - in 1969, in - where else? - California. Specifically in Dublin, an inland East Bay city close not only to Altamont itself, but also to Death Grips’ own home base of Sacramento.
That opening track, “Beware”, of course, begins by sampling a Charles Manson interview from 1969, another figure extremely closely associated with that dark side of the end of the 1960s. Even the Hell’s Angels connection, the most obviously scapegoated villains of the Altamont saga , is hinted at through the sample of Link Wray’s 1958 song “Rumble'' on “Spread Eagle Cross the Block'' - “Rumble”, the only instrumental to ever be banned from US radio play, was so censored because of its association with motorcycle gang brawls and the perception that its undeniably badarse central riff served as an incitement to “juvenile delinquency”. 60s tracks chosen for their menace or sense of unease show up throughout the record. Anti-cop anthem “Klink” uses the organ riff from “Liar, Liar” (1965) by The Castaways. “I Want It I Need It (Death Heated)” draws from not one but both of the side openers from Pink Floyd’s Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967), their first record and only where they were led by infamously unstable frontman Syd Barrett whose mental health problems were exacerbated by heavy LSD use. It’s all deeply evocative without ever making any of this explicit.
Of course, I don’t think this was necessarily a theme that Death Grips had in mind when they were putting this record together. This narrative, too, is a lie. Of course it is - it’s a narrative. Not to say it wouldn’t be cool. But like so many conspiracies and conspiracy-like concepts of hidden connections, it’s one that my neocortex latched onto with its instinctive desire for pattern recognition taking the lead and pulling the rest of the brain along like an enthusiastic dog on a walk that wants to selectively ignore evidence that doesn’t feed into the pattern. Hell, if you wanted, you could point to the use of Black Flag, Bad Brains and the Beastie Boys - multiple times! - along with the band’s own intense shouted approach as evidence that they were positioning themselves in the lineage of west coast 80s hardcore punk instead, and that’d be just as valid. The Pet Shop Boys sample doesn’t really fit anywhere.
But - and I fully realise I am saying this as a beleaguered high school English teacher - that shit’s just fun. It’s fun to spot potential connections and draw out further ones, to think about what a record might mean not just lyrically but musically and thematically. It’s fun to spot and to draw connections between the popular narrative around the end of the 1960s musical counterculture and the early 2010s work of impish industrial-rap-punk provocateurs. And it’s fun to draw those out through reflection, investigation, and distraction. Plus I got to dunk on Yeezus again.
Exmilitary is a good album. Do yourself a favour.
Spotify killed the mixtape, and Lil Wayne’s career-defining mid-00s run could not happen today. There’s a hot take-based tangent to mull over.
Do not get me started on the political developments in the US and internationally which put lie to this. We’ll be here all week, and it’s beside the point anyway - the narrative exists outside it.
The title and subtitle of this post was enough to make me create a Substack account. I haven’t read the article (yet), but: the Yeezus defender has logged on.