For a moment, forget about the cock on the cover: The most arresting and totemic image of this week's Death Grips debacle and/or coup actually arrived about five hours before the brazen California trio released its second major-label LP, NO LOVE DEEP WEB, online, for free and under an anything-goes Creative Commons license. Shirtless so as to expose the web of tattoos on his body, Death Grips frontman MC Ride stands with his back to the camera, his middle fingers foisted high and a cigarette tucked into his left hand. But he's balancing on a balcony, high up in what appears to be a rather well-furbished neighborhood, his toes hanging just over the ledge. He's tempting fate and taking the chance to make the strongest statement possible, even if he (and the photographer overhead) had to risk a fall to the death to get it. In fact, the only incident that might have given the riot-act release of NO LOVE DEEP WEB more currency in the media would have been an accidental death. At the very least, it would have kept at bay the conspiracy theorists calling Death Grips' Monday move a publicity stunt performed in conjunction with Epic Records. "Too soon," you'd say.
At the risk of appearing moribund, that phenomenon of big stunts and instant exits largely defines NO LOVE DEEP WEB, not just in release style but also in musical makeup. These 13 tracks thrive on paranoia and aggression, feelings threaded together by the sense that everything could be ending right now. With his voice squeezed above a heavy thud and electro chirp, MC Ride rolls the dice again, as he did on the balcony's ledge: "My life on a limb about to break." Across these 46 minutes, Ride creates a series of memento mori scenarios (and even goes so far as to invoke that phrase) and dares them to destroy him. As he puts it, "Fuck this world/ Fuck this body."
The record's most obvious example is "World of Dogs", which opens with the repetitive hook "It's all suicide" over Zach Hill's death-jazz drums. Crushed by its own quest for redemption, the grueling pace and noose-necked premise-- "Die with me/ Blow out the lights, take your life/ Ride the falling sky with me"-- make the song more grim than most black metal in 2012. The hook of "Lil Boy" is an invitation to burn brighter and faster, while the mortality-obsessed and especially corrosive "Lock Your Doors" includes a falling-from-life scream convincing enough to be sampled from a horror film. A minute later, Ride pictures the flame of a candle like the sand slipping through the hourglass: "Light the candle, burn the wax/ Before me dies, in scorch uprise/ Can't deny it, no way back." It's as if NO LOVE DEEP WEB was written and recorded knowing that its ultimate fate would either kill or catapult Death Grips. Essentially, the risk becomes the biggest reward.