The Double Doghouse

this week for the weekly review, we’re checking out Death Grip’s fifth studio record, Bottomless Pit, released in 2016!

mmm i love me a good earworm and Giving Bad People Good Ideas is a real earworm with that hook, plus the verses are relentless and pressing. extremely strong start. Hot Head has an very compelling contrast – i love the synth work, especially when they break out into a more traditional verse, but the “blo blo blo” parts are…. difficult, obviously intentionally, and those parts of the track meld together over the runtime into a really interesting crescendo. lyrically, god it’s a good example of how they can weave in and out of being so lyrically dense. interesting track, even if i’m not sure where i land on it, haha. man Spikes is def my fave track – musically it’s got some excellent synth segments driven by fantastic percussion, and lyrically it conveys the feeling of opening all cylinders and feeling every ounce of resistance. Warping feels like it’s named, no doubt. man the flow on Eh is great. Ride’s normally hyper aggressive style falls back and lets the synth cover the energy – perfect for the track. Bubbles Buried In This Jungle is p good. Trash was the sleeper hit on this record for me. it’s constant, unending, consistent. highly repetitive, perfect thematically to bury your ears in trash. Houdini’s pretty good too – lotta fun moments on the track, but tends to just slide over me. BB Poison comments on their social media relationship with their fans – i don’t interact in these spaces but i DO spend time in KGLW fan spaces and uh. yeah i can see how social media interactions with obsessive fans can cause issues, haha. reading a bit about the tweet they reference at the end of the song says a lot. got no thoughts on Three Bedrooms In a Good Neighborhood. neat listen. i enjoy Ring a Bell quite a bit, though predictably a large part of it is the synth-pop hook on the chorus, haha. 80808’s another one that kinda just flows by me. some neat moments, but nothing digs its hooks in. the title track, Bottomless Pit, closes us out. it’s relentless, agressive, and violent. extremely effective closer!

faves – Giving Bad People Good Ideas, Spikes, Eh, Trash
dislikes –

man i loved how they used the synths on this record, haha. lotta cool ways to contrast Ride’s voice with the dynamic range of moods they built with the synth lines here, and there’s some really excellent tracks amongst the tracklist. lyrically and thematically, it’s a pretty solid package! lotta commentary on the internet, their relationship to the type of fame they’ve cultivated, and intimacy and distance. had a good time with this one for sure, even amongst the harsher or stranger parts of the record, haha.

Bottomless Pit – 8/10

next week, i’ll be back again checking out Pages’ self-titled record 1981. i’ll be back next Friday, June 9nd with that review and to pick another weekly record, and in the meantime, let me know what album you’d like me to review! (i pool all suggestions in one place, and draw a person, then one pick from that person, so feel free to drop as many as you’d like! if you leave an email or username i’ll contact you when i’ve gotten through all your suggestions.)