Niggas on the Moon

If you need proof that "bad press" as a concept is largely a thing of the past, look no further than Death Grips. The shifting collective—sometimes a trio, occasionally a duo, and at one point consisting of no members at all—have spent the last two years staging a public, low-level coup on people's attention spans that, in terms of subversiveness, has fallen somewhere between egging someone's house and stealing your neighbor's WiFi. Their actions have scanned as humorous, aggressive, contemptible, and puerile—sometimes all at once—and despite any high-minded claims, the ends to the means have been excellent promotion for a body of work that's proved increasingly confounding. Their first record, 2011's Exmilitary, remains their most overlooked work even as it represents Death Grips at their most elemental, a potent, nasty mix of blasted rap figures, percussive mania, and corroded noise that smacked of a modern-day Judgment Night soundtrack featuring collaborations beteween Dälek and Lightning Bolt.

A year later, Death Grips returned with The Money Store, a dizzying rush of an album with a title that likely referenced the group's short-lived major-label contract with Epic. At the time, band mastermind Zach Hill—a veteran drummer who, after a decade-plus of alternating between the roles of reliable sideman and unsung noise-scene hero, has undoubtedly benefited the most from Death Grips' notoriety—claimed that label honcho L.A. Reid air-drummed to the band's music upon signing and compared them to Whitney Houston. The former is a funny image, the latter ostensibly a tasteless joke, but upon engaging with The Money Store, all attendant information becomes irrelevant. A thrilling document of puckered melody and blue-screen-of-death chaos that stands as the project's strongest release to date, The Money Store resembled the revolting, ultra-violent conclusion to director Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher films: a dead body hung upside down, its contents drained and shoved into a garbage disposal.

Later that year, NO LOVE DEEP WEB arrived without warning and free of charge, triggering a well-documented war between Death Grips and their cash-flow overlords. Quite possibly the most dissonant album ever recorded at the Chateau Marmont, NO LOVE DEEP WEB found Death Grips doubling down on sonic viscera. It's a thick, sludgy record in which the group's wild-eyed mouthpiece Stefan Burnett sounds like he's trapped in hell, dragging himself through a landscape of destruction. Rather than capitalize on the comparatively bright accessibility of The Money Store, it suggested Death Grips were prepared to get weirder. Last year's Government Plates headed even further into left-of-center territory, drawing inspiration from the glitchy terror of IDM's more aggressive elements.

Like its predecessor, Government Plates was released suddenly for nothing—and so it goes, too, with Niggas on the Moon, the project's latest missive that arrived last Sunday evening. An eight-track release that stands as Death Grips' shortest effort to date, Niggas on the Moon comes bearing a title that possibly references Gil Scott-Heron, along with claims of a high-profile collaborator: Björk, who's no stranger when it comes to working with inhumanly talented drummers from the noise scene.

But nothing is quite as it seems in Death Grips' world, so within 24 hours of Niggas on the Moon's release it emerged that rumors of Björk's contributions may have been greatly exaggerated. "i am proud to announce my vocals landed on the new death grips album !" she exclaimed in an official statement the day after Niggas on the Moon dropped. "i adore death grips and i am thrilled to be their 'found object' !" The phrase "found object" suggests that she wasn't so much an active artistic partner as much as a passive supplier of source material, another sound thrown into Death Grips' culture-wiping meat grinder. Her presence on the album is, similar to Venus Williams' guttural cries sampled on The Money Store cut "System Blower", mangled and distorted beyond recognition.

Whether Björk's presence is the result of Death Grips' sampling her previous work or her providing fresh vocal takes for the band's disposal, Death Grips largely lean on her propensity for ecstatic crescendos. On "Have a Sad Cum" and album closer "Big Dipper", her cries are looped in perpetuity, producing a hallucinatory effect not unlike the trippy repetition of Chicago footwork; "Billy Not Really" opens with a perpetual build anchored by glottal coos, while "Say Hey Kid" opens with hyperspeed bass-and-drums a la Squarepusher before twisting Björk's voice into what sounds like panpipes, over a bed of rustling electronics.

Death Grips have remixed Björk before. They contributed takes on "Sacrifice" and "Thunderbolt", two songs taken from her 2011 album Biophilia, to 2012's remix collection Bastards; their remix of the former tune is especially notable in that it recycles the march-of-death bassline from "System Blower". Similarly, Niggas on the Moon finds Death Grips drawing from themselves rather than pushing things forward, a deviation from their mission statement. Anyone familiar with the band's mix of aggressive electronics, barked non-sequiturs, and collapsing song structures will find plenty to like here. After three years of aiming to confuse and shock, Death Grips are approaching reliability, and the presence of truly thrilling moments has decreased accordingly.

Complacency doesn't suit Death Grips very well, but Niggas on the Moon's high points suggest regardless that, for now, Death Grips-as-Death Grips occasionally yields satisfying results. Opener "Up My Sleeves" is a prime slice of mania that, should the band ever release a "Greatest Hits" collection (imagine that), would fit right in with their highest highs. "Black Quarterback" possesses a gleeful skip punctuated by inside-out percussion that hits like repeated punches to the abdomen; the processional gait of "Big Dipper" sounds like poisoned marching-band music, as Burnett throws out bon mots that highlight Death Grips' still-undervalued sense of humor: "I'm a bullshitter/ I'm a shitty stripper...I'm a fucking downer."

As a vocalist and lyricist, Burnett draws strength from his surroundings. When chaos engulfs him, he thrives on the energy; during Death Grips' more downtempo moments, he sounds adrift, his anti-sloganeering coming off as ridiculous and deflated, his audience laughing at rather than with him. Niggas on the Moon is, as a whole, Death Grips' least intense album, which doesn't work in Burnett's favor. Many of the record's songs have midsections that dial down the intensity before revving up again, and while Burnett's phonetic emphasis occasionally pulls him through, elsewhere he sounds listless. Death Grips achieve potency when sounding frantic, untamed, and unstable; Niggas on the Moon's more subdued moments, comparatively, resemble a brisk walk on a treadmill, and as a result it's less immediate than their previous work.

With the arrival of Niggas on the Moon came the news that the record is part of a forthcoming double-album, The Powers That B, set for release later this year on the band's own label, Third Worlds, as well as Harvest, a subsidiary of major-label entity Capitol. Death Grips are, indeed, featured on Harvest's website, so their second flirtation with the music industry's explicitly corporate arena seems to be as structurally legitimate as their first time around—then again, this is a band that prides itself on the capability to catch its audience off guard, so who knows how the rest of the year will play out for them.

With Niggas on the Moon, though, it's hard to shake the feeling that Death Grips might benefit from a change in aesthetic and conceptual focus. Even setting aside the creative stasis the music embodies, the major-label affiliations and surprise-release gimmick produces a stale whiff of deja vu. Without new tricks and fresh aggression, Death Grips risk coming across as safe and ordinary, a mess of broken teeth summarily replaced by a gap-toothed smile.