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Drums Of Death is the unexpected clash of two very respectable names in the global music scene: the first is the Subliminal Kid, Dj Spooky, an electronic genius who for years has been blending jazz, dub, ambient, hip-hop, and jungle and rules over the significant New York scene with his sets and extraordinary artistic presence; his partner in this endeavor is the drummer for Slayer and Fantomas, a true war machine named Dave Lombardo who surprises greatly with the versatility he shows in adapting to rather alien and extravagant genres.
But that's not all: in this release dated 2005, the pyrotechnic Vernon Reid (Living Color) also plays, and Chuck D (Public Enemy) makes a notable appearance on vocals. In short, a true feast of talents that attracts us as much as it makes us fear for the final result...
Drums Of Death is a bastard record: it could be a hybrid but instead, it's a bastard. From such a group of eccentrics, you never know what to expect, and there's always the risk of being disappointed. And so, the start is harsh and mean: if after the electronic intro you thought you were in for a nice trip, you're way off, Brother's Gonna Work It Out is a rap in Public Enemy style, slightly tinged with heavy riffs and imposing drum rolls. It seems that the main man of the album is the most understated, while a warm applause goes to the unknown Jack Dangers, producer and multi-instrumentalist present in all tracks (here on guitar and bass). It might be a fleeting impression because Quantum Cyborg Drum Machine and Metatron are funk-rock instrumentals with a high electronic rate: yet Reid's work and especially Lombardo's remain more impactful, almost as if the New York knob-turner limited himself to a finishing job, excellent but perhaps not incisive enough.
It's thus a pleasure to be contradicted by Assisted Suicide: one of the absolute peaks of the album. Dj Spooky creates a base as exotic as it is claustrophobic (thanks to the sampling of a vocal snippet by Meredith Monk) for Dalek's clean and geometric rhyming, while the tough drummer punctuates with precious offbeats what is a wonderful piece of alternative and conscious hip-hop (only slightly lesser to the expressionist masterpieces of the almost contemporary Absence, by Dalek, Still, and Oktopus). Kultur Krieg doesn't differ much from the previous instrumentals, except for the whimsical rhythmic evolutions of the ever more creative and unstoppable Lombardo. B-Side Wins Again is a fantastic industrial crossover, made even more aggressive by Chuck's emphatic rapping: it could be a beautiful cyber-punk version of Living Colour.
From here on, the album transforms into what we all hoped for: an epic battle between the live rhythms of the drums and the abstract and raw digressions of turntables and computers. A give-and-take between two very different yet terribly bordering conceptions. The result? Brilliant and fairly democratic: ambient-jazz, progressive-dub, jungle-rock... Spectacular, imagine an Entroducing... excessively unruly and enhanced by the contribution of a very sweaty live band.
Unfortunately, reality calls with Terra Nullius (a very sad and coarse funk-metal, devoid of any hint of intelligence or originality) and Public Enemy #1, which seems to mimic the namesake group and it's surprising that all these artists can churn out such a banal and mediocre track. The soft, psychedelic, and layered pace of Obscured Disorder only increases the regret: if the energies had always been used in this way, it would have resulted in a fundamental record, not weighed down by certain tone-deaf falls that are unforgivable for the ensemble.
At the end of the listening session, one can say that the glass is half-empty and half-full: many findings are spectacular and very entertaining, but equally numerous are the sins scattered throughout the album and this is not quite acceptable.Loading comments slowly
