Album title: Government Plates
Artiste: Death Grips
Genre: Experimental hip-hop
Year: 2013
Label: Third Worlds
Producer: Death Grips
Chronological position: Fourth album
Notes: First album to be released on their own independent label, licenced to Capitol Records
Album chart position: n/a (Mostly I guess to them basically giving the album away free)
Singles: n/a
Well it's been an interesting ride so far, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I liked the debut, was lukewarm about the second one and loved the third. Can this continue the appreciation for this band, appreciation I never expected to have? Let's see.
Review begins
Breaking glass, screams, wild horns and sounds usher in the first track, whose title is seriously long but I'm going to abbreviate to “You think he loves you”. The vocal is very echoey, very fast, quite frenetic, sirens going off in the background and some sort of bass loop or something, kind of almost metal in a way. This isn't on Spotify so I have to YouTube and the one I managed to get working has no individual track times on it, so great: time for me to keep count again. Love that. Really.
This is very experimental I must say, very confused and chaotic, and I would say Frownland loves it. Can't say I do. All right, that's fu
cking ridiculous. The guy who uploaded this noted that it's “forwards and backwards” and I think wtf? But it seems like, yeah, he has recorded all the tracks backwards as well as forwards, why I have no idea but it's confusing as hell, so I'm trying the video album instead. Maybe I'll have better luck with that. Or not. Either way, I still don't like that opener, but then I didn't like the first track on the other album either.
The word “Pirate” is spoken by a female voice and then very electronic synth as “Anne Bonny” opens, with mostly it seems just words rather than actual sentences being spoken by MC Ride. Seems Hill may be the focal point of this album, and it's feeling more like The Money Store than No Love Deep Web. For the moment, disappointing, but we'll see how it goes. “Two Heavens” does at least have a proper stream of vocals, very slow, with a rattling drumbeat behind it, and sounds like female vox in the background. Sounds of bells, or metal being hit maybe, very ringing sound anyway. At least this is more structured than the first two, and I like it a good deal more than them, though in fairness that wouldn't be hard. This is tough going.
Again, more musical is “This is violence now (Don't get me wrong)” with mostly the title being the only lyric, and sampled vocals going off too, again quite electronica in its way, though not a lot in it to be honest. “Birds” was the first track released to the public prior to the album coming out, and has a nice kind of climbing scale thing going, maybe on piano, don't know. The rap is much better here, not quite so confused as things have been up to now. It's quite nice really. There's a lot of warped synth lines in it, which kind of make me feel a little woozy. Like the rhythm on “Feels like a wheel”, sort of an amalgam between a doom metal beat and an African tempo. I don't know what the fu
ck I'm saying anymore: sounds like the crashing drums from New Order's “Blue Monday” in there too. Bloody Hell.
Sort of hard to figure out exactly what's going on here. “I'm overflow” starts off with a rap, unaccompanied really and then more strange electronic synthy noises cut in and take over. The rap is fast but the music basically slow. I think we're on “Big house” now, which has a mad, galloping electronic synth and then slows down for the rap and some pretty laidback percussion. There's definitely a lot of electronic music being used/made/sampled on this album. The title track (is this the first time there's been one?) has a lot of slowed-down vocal samples and then some sort of Spanish, Mexican or god knows what thing for the start of “Bootleg (Don't need your help)” followed by whistling keys, then warped samples, slow drumbeat and the return of that opening bit, guess it's sampled or looped speech. Fu
ck knows. My head hurts. Sooner this is over the better. And it does, finally, come to an end with “Whatever I want (F
uck who's watching)” with more fast electronic keyboard and almost club track I guess. I'm out of here. Six minutes of this? No thanks.
Track listing and ratings
You might think he loves you for your money but I know what he really loves you for it's your brand new leopard skin pillbox hat
Anne Bonney
Two heavens
This is violence now (Don't get me wrong)
Birds
Feels like a wheel
I'm overflow
Big house
Government plates
Bootleg (Don't need your help)
Whatever I want (Fuck who's watching)
Afterword:
Yeah, it was too good to be true. This was mostly pretty inaccessible to me. Just really chaotic and all over the place. Virtually impossible to review, very hard to listen to and frankly not interesting at all in the way the previous album was. It's made my mind up to put a pin in this for now and I'll come back to finish the discography sometime in the future.
Rating: 
