Nightmare Fuel / Death Grips

Ehhhhh.

Death Grips: Cryptic, aesthetic, and scary as hell.

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Death Grips EP

• The cover seems to be just a complete unintelligible mess, but if you invert the colors of image, it reveals a (still slightly hard to see) picture of a bird and and what is potentially its prey.
  • That same bird appears in the video for Full Moon (Death Classic) in its unedited form.
• Imagine the viewpoint of some music nerd back in 2011, first opening up the EP and listening to the opening riff of Death Grips (Next Grips), (which is actually a sample,) and thinking this EP would be a rock-centered 6-Track journey. Nope. Not in the slightest.
• "Full Moon (Death Classic)". Its Nightmare Fuel is attributed mainly to MC Ride's Careful with That Axe levels getting cranked up to eleven. To add on to the horror, the video is extremely disorienting, with the footage of Ride flickering very quickly.

Exmilitary

• Exmilitary's first song, "Beware", starts with a Charles Manson recording and continues into MC Ride giving us an all-access pass journey into Hell, laying bare an incredibly violent, nihilistic philosophy.
  "I close my eyes and seize it
  I clench my fists and beat it
  I light my torch and burn it
  I am the beast I worship."
• The way Ride first yells "SHIT IS MINE! IT'S ALL MINE! ALL THE TIME! SHIT IS MINE!" in "Spread Eagle Cross the Block".

The Money Store

• The Creepy Circus Music at the start of "Double Helix", which is then heard throughout the song as a backing beat of sorts.
• The horrifying, guttural scream sampled in the bridge of "System Blower", which is from, of all things, Serena Williams returning a tennis serve. God help us all.
• Hacker. I'm in your area... I'm in... Your area! (...) I know the first three numbers! I'm in!
• "I've Seen Footage" MC Ride raps about staying paranoid and him seeing..some footage. Later in the song we get what he's talking about.
  "On some kid who stepped so, fast was hard to grasp, what even happened til you seen that head blow, off his shoulders in slow mo, rewind that, it's so cold"
• The bass on "Punk Weight." God DAMN, that bass...

NO LOVE DEEP WEB

• "Come Up and Get Me": The entire song is about MC Ride being stuck in an 8-story abandoned building surrounded by people who want to kill him. He is also suffering from hallucinations and delusions so bad that by the end it becomes clear that though he won't commit suicide (by jumping off said building) his pain is great enough that he'll call the people hired to kill him up to get him.
  • The video is Nightmare Fuel on its own merits, considering the first 9 or so minutes is of black-and-white footage of Ride effectively going insane. We see him devouring a house plant in a disquietingly feral manner, hanging upside down, and doing all sorts of creepy things. There's also the image of Zach struggling to get out of a pair of handcuffs while underwater. Oh, and it's mostly completely silent, so you don't know what's gonna happen next.
• "No Love": The disorienting synths and the pounding drums at the beginning and during the verses are enough to unsettle the listener, but what drives it home is a single tiny line near the middle of the song:
  Of course I can make you scream but if you ask for more
  Bullshit matador grab the floor whip it cracked to all fours
  You whimper while i check my phone
• "Lock Your Doors." The screaming, that...video. Let's not forget the lyrics.
  "CAN'T REMEMBER, I'M NO ONE NOW. COMIN FOR YOURS, LOCK YOUR DOORS..."
• "Hunger Games": MC Ride going through mood swings, daring the person he's talking to to push him onto another one. Doesn't sound all that threatening in text, but accompanied by the crazy 808 drumbeats under his words, it makes the listener want to back away as quickly as they can.
• The album's finale, "Artificial Death in the West", is not that scary. But notice the eerie synths in the background...

Government Plates

• All of the visuals, save for the front and back ends of the album, are objects in a black void being moved around and whatnot. Classic case of Nothing Is Scarier.
• "You might think he loves you for your money but I know what he loves you for it's your leopard skin pillbox hat" begins with a sound of breaking glass and segues into MC Ride frantically rapping over a screeching synth about dying and possessing another person's body with his spirit. Let's not forget the bloodcurdling scream sample throughout the song...
  • Not to mention the video for that song. It's nothing but a big long shot of MC Ride acting batshit crazy in front of the camera, getting uncomfortably close at times.
• "Birds." The distorted rambling and discordant synths, followed by MC Ride's unusually calm delivery make it sound like a descent into hell
• "Two Heavens." The creepy ringing in the beginning, and that hook is...disturbing.
  "Pressin' down the pillow till i can't hear you breathin, for no reason"

The Powers That B

ɴɪɢɢᴀs ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴏɴ

• The backing screams throughout "Voila", backed by uncomfortably hectic beats.
  • MC Ride's vocal delivery as well, considering he's almost seductively reciting lines laced with Paranoia Fuel.
  "Maybe I belong to you / I'm sure you want me to / My shadow's onto you / Voila, voila"
• The closing track, Big Dipper, suddenly disintegrates into what can be described as a purgatory of Bjork samples.

ᴊᴇɴɴʏ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ

• The second verse of "Inanimate Sensation". It's creepily whispered instead of rapped.
  • The music video also combines together strange CGI animation with live action scenes of Ride rapping. The strange CGI alone might be creepy to some, but most of all there are scenes near the start of the video where the visuals briefly show menacing looking eyes starring at the viewer. Though the creepiness is also offset by scenes of Ride wearing giant googly eyes.
• "Why A Bitch Gotta Lie" - from the thrashy hard rock instrumental, distorted noises and nightmarish vocal samples throughout, to Ride's rapping in the verses processed such that he sounds like a robot from hell.
• While the song's lyrical matter is something else entirely, "On GP" juxtaposes harsh, disorienting audio with bare, vaguely-changing visuals, where Death Grips sit in an echo chamber and are practically still over the six minutes of extremely loud guitars and drums. With how still Stefan, Zach and Andy are, it may be somewhat of a shock to see them doing any sort of movement in the video, such as Stefan lying down, or Zach leaning against the wall.
• The title track may well be one of the angriest and heaviest things they've ever made. The monstrously distorted, pounding synths and MC Ride's enraged vocal delivery, as well as lyrics that seemingly describe dying and becoming something else entirely can be terrifying for some listeners.
• "Death Grips 2.0". The scattered drum beats and the dark synths make the track sound like it's from a sci-fi horror film.

Bottomless Pit

• Hot Head, which breaks up its catchy groove with numerous volleys of outright chaos courtesy of the entire band, plus Nick Reinhardt.
• "Warping" carries on in the tradition of "No Love" and "The Powers That B", combining a lurching, heavy industrial beat with some very grisly imagery in the lyrics.
  "Luster of entrails stacked and slung
  Under cement veils my traffic hums"
• The music video to "Eh." Imagine the 3D plotting technology used in Radiohead's "House of Cards" taken to horrifically unnerving degrees, and then add on what seems to be a woman (shown in the page image) moving and talking even after she's been drawn & quartered and after the man who was torturing the woman gets attacked by the woman, it's hard to tell from the animation, but SOMETHING'S horribly wrong with his face.
• The title track. It's violent, aggressive, and the lyrics are rather grotesque as well.
  I'LL FUCK YOU IN HALF

Year of the Snitch

• The rather disturbing album cover depicts mouths sticking out of what appears to be a table. It's no No Love Deep Web, but it's quite disturbing.
  • It's made especially more creepy/disgusting considering that the tracklist video shows that they are actual mouths, and not part of a sculpture.
• The tracklist video features a confusing poem read by Zach, followed by the sound of MC Ride screeching like a banshee being repeated as each track name (with accompanying videos) is revealed; to say the least, the absolute oppression that is delivered to viewers with absolutely zero context promises some very dark tones for the full album.
  • The poem in question..is pretty abstract and chilling as fuck, in not an example of Mind Screw:
  Let us remember Death
  The snitch, the child yet to be born
  Perhaps astonishing to no one
  And what will be it's water
  to do what it has done
  And when will that be done
  By something
  is it even someone?
  • In regards to Ride's banshee screaming...fans pointed out it sounds like he's screaming "WHYYYYY ME?!".^note Later revealed to be sampled from "Disappointed"
• Death Grips Is Online's chorus features MC Ride howling out to the ether.
  PRETTY PRETTY NIIIIINE
  MOTHA FUCKAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
• Flies's chorus describes MC Ride's fly-eaten carcass in revolting detail.
  Should the opportunity rise
  Vomit me flies
  Flies vomit me
  Vomit green eyes
• The creepy circus music in the start of "Hahaha". Other than that, the song isn't that creepy to listen to. But listen to the almost eerie guitars in the hook..
• "The Fear" is seemingly about Ride about to jump off a balcony and is made especially effective by his vocal delivery
  I FEEL SO SICK TODAY
  I'm afraid to be here with you
  YOU WANNA KILL SOMEBODY
  I'm afraid to be here with you
• "Shitshow" can only be appropriately described as unrelenting.
• The Outro track (which isn't really even an outro track) comes out of left field with an unusually happy ditty. It feels so off for a band like this to put a track like Outro out. It's too happy.

Other

• In fact, really, the entirety of the Death Grips catalogue follows MC Ride's slow journey from being kinda violent to fully embracing a hedonistically terrible lifestyle to starting to be driven insane by said lifestyle to, with Government Plates's oddly taciturn songs, catatonia.
• Their ARGs, in which they frequently post very cryptic and creepy pictures with hidden puzzles all over 4chan and the Deep Web, and generally messing with everyone heavily.

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