eMusic Review 0
As audacious agit-prop moves go, metal-gazing Newark undie-hop duo Dälek opening their fifth-or-sixth album by sampling old Obama pal Rev. Jeremiah Wright railing long and hard about American soldiers murdering babies and unarmed civilians will be a hard one to top in 2009. They make his spiel flow like a Last Poet, too, and it perfectly sets the stage for the apocalyptic aural graffiti that follows. Though the pair's recent music has sometimes tended toward a monotonal blur that could fade into the background with all the modern Neurosis/Isis competition, Gutter Tactics seems as determined to spray-paint the urban landscape as anything these guys have done since 2002's prescient Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots.
That said, anybody who tells you he's catching most of the words is pulling your leg. The raps mostly sound drawled deadpan through scuba gear 20,000 leagues under the sewer — a dystopian distortion-rap distancing technique harking back as far as Rammellzee's early '80s work with Death Comet Crew. There's a line about a black president here, one about shattered homes or Palestine there, but only in a couple tracks are words audible in more than mere snatches: "Los Macheteros/Spear Of A Nation,"… read more »
