Final - I Am the Dirt Under Your Fingernails (2002)

I first encountered Final back in the eighties when we both turned up on the same compilation tape. I got into Godflesh a bit late in the day - late nineties or thereabouts - and at least another decade had passed before I made the connection, that both were the work of the same individual, namely Justin Broadrick. This made a lot of sense despite Final and Godflesh sounding very different to each other. I Am the Dirt Under Your Fingernails also sounds significantly different to what I'd heard of Final back in the eighties, but then a fair bit of time has passed and this shares the same concrete-density as much of Broadrick's other work.

I detect what may have been feedback, but otherwise it's anyone's guess where these sounds originated. Mine would be that whatever it is we have here was recorded on traditional tape then slowed to a sludge-crawl to the point where even the shrillest of screams is reduced to a bass rumble hung precipitously on the edge of hearing, even the slightest variation in tape speed stretched to tonal craters in what is very much a sonic landscape; and the occasional flicker of drop-out may even be spaghettified gaps between molecules of ferric oxide. Anal Probe, who issued the compilation where I first heard Final, had a photocopied catalogue listing destroyed music amongst the vague genres in which they specialised, and I'm fairly sure that's what we have here.

That said, whatever the first thing to hit you may be when you listen to this disc, discordant racket somehow doesn't figure. Minutes passed before I noticed I'd been listening to this thing very much as music rather than merely engaging noise. The notes we've been left with are long and mournful, evoking mist, rain, and vast spaces from which life has moved on. The best description I can come up with - and which occurred to me as I was listening - was if the first SPK album felt like listening to Elgar. There's something monolithic here, something carved in stone and so weathered as to be barely recognisable, something which has left behind a sense of loss as big as the world.

Tad - Quick and Dirty (2018)

Record Store Day fills me with cynicism. I've always listened to record albums because that's my preferred medium, so I don't need a special day. I collect record albums because I like music, not for the sake of being a collector, and anyone who ever used the term vinyls as a plural noun can go fuck themselves. A few Record Store Days back, they issued an exclusive double album of Devo live in Seattle, and because I fucking love Devo, I had to have it. I knew Hogwild would open at nine so I got there at seven, and even then found myself stood behind a hundred or so teenagers. The queuing itself wasn't bad. The only other person over thirty was queuing directly behind me. He was after something or other by Wire and told me he loved all the English bands of that era. He also told me that he used to live in Mexico City but had come back to San Antonio because he was tired of getting kidnapped, so it was an interesting conversation. Two hours later, the doors opened, and by the time I made it in, there was no Devo live double album to be had because apparently they hadn't even ordered the fucker; and yet copies were quite naturally already for sale on eBay and Discogs at extortionate prices, so I wasn't very happy about that.

This time I forgot about Record Store Day, despite having read that there would be a Tad album amongst all the usual worthless exclusives - Barry Manilow in red vinyl and the like. I guess I'd subconsciously resigned myself to being unable to get hold of a copy, and typically it was going for twice the price on Discogs that same afternoon; but I dutifully trudged along to the store next day, just in case, and fuck me…

Quick and Dirty is one side studio material and one side live, and the studio material is previously unheard, half of what we may as well call a lost Tad album - which is a very exciting thing indeed. It's been a while since I saw Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears so I have only a vague impression of how the band just kind of dissolved following a series of kicks in the proverbial teeth, and I'm not even sure I was aware they were still enough of a concern to have recorded the six newly unearthed tracks in 1999.

Tad, for the uninitiated, were how Joy Division would have sounded had they grown up in rural American woodland with only a job at the sawmill to look forward to - much harder to kill, more honest about the enduring influence of Black Sabbath, and numerous shitloads heavier. In fact Tad were pretty much the heaviest thing ever. The music speaks of rural horror, boredom, loathing, and shitty deeds undertaken for the sake of maintaining sanity, all of which contrasts with something quite vulnerable at the heart of the storm. Musically it's concrete blocks of grinding sound pinned together at bizarre mathematical angles, yet pinned together by human craft and muscle rather than engineering. There's a mechanistic quality in the relentless advance of these rhythms, born not from machines but from those brutalised by their own lives; or it makes Godflesh sound like the Sundays, if you prefer.

The six new tracks neatly fill a gap between Oppenheimer's Pretty Nightmare and the stuff Doyle recorded with Hog Molly a year or so later. Hog Molly chugged a little harder with less contrast in evidence, and were lyrically more single-minded, songs often relying on the repetition of innocuous phrases posing more questions than were answered; which can be heard here on Mummified Cop and others blending with the suggestion of melancholia and melody I assume must have come from Kurt Danielson.

I'm not usually wild about live albums, not even Tad's Live Alien Broadcasts which is decent but, bizarrely, somehow fails to invoke the raw energy of their studio recordings; so it's nice that the live side of Quick and Dirty really captures them, huge, crushing, terrifying, sweaty and probably a bit on the aromatic side, but still nailing it all down with absolute precision, and nothing lost to the sludge.

Quick and Dirty has made me very happy, so I suppose I'm going to have to concede the point that one good thing has come out of Record Store Day.

Godflesh - Selfless (1994)

I've tried and tried with Streetcleaner, and while I can appreciate all which is great about it, I find it a bit loose and formless in certain respects; and hence a disappointment, having backtracked from Us & Them. However, Selfless, the third album, is much more in line of what I'd hoped Streetcleaner would be - crushing and intense, but where the first album howled, this one chugs. In fact, it's actually pretty tuneful for something which gazes so grimly across the plains of despair into the gloating maw of eternity - not tuneful in the sense of anything a milkman could whistle, but he could certainly grunt these riffs to himself while sorting you out for eggs and yoghurt, or remarking that's nice in response to a pensioner describing how she often enjoys a drop of milk on her porridge of a morning.

I'm inclined to wonder whether the lads worried over steering too close to becoming a variation on Black Sabbath, hence the wall of guitar initially serving as an effect rather than something which carries notes. Not that there's anything wrong with being a variation on Black Sabbath, but in any case it isn't really an issue. Even with this sludge variant on what may well sound like Chuck Berry when you play it at 78rpm, the mood holds, pinned down by its painfully slow rhythm and that howling into the void dynamic which I tend to associate with Skullflower, Ramleh, and the like.

Talking of Ramleh, it's probably no coincidence that Selfless should feature a track called Anything is Mine, although it resembles the Ramleh version mainly in terms of sheer force and aggression and isn't what you would call a cover, so far as I can tell. The biggest surprise for me, relatively speaking, has been noticing how these songs have an almost tender quality once you listen past the chug - bruised, abused and vulnerable, and something seeming to touch on a certain mania in the likes of Body Dome Light which suggests the kind of schizophrenic episode people associate with alien abduction - although it's probably a metaphor. I mention all this because I'm not sure this soft interior is anything the Swans ever quite achieved, at least not with such eloquence and not until they took to Simon and Garfunkel impersonations; and I mention the Swans as they seem thematically closest to Godflesh, but somewhat better publicised. Of course, all this bollocks may well be simply me noticing patterns, but then maybe patterns are the whole point; or summink.

All I know is that this one fucking rocks really, really hard.

Smiley face.

Smiley face.

Roni Size / Reprazent - New Forms (1997)

Whilst I'm always happy to hear new music, I generally find that new music makes its way to me so it's just a case of keeping my ears open. I don't actively seek out new music for the sake of it, and I tend to regard those who do as trying too hard - for example, a certain facebook twat who recently opined:

I'm fifty-one. My favorite bands right now are Otherkin, Bad Sounds, Spring King, Sundara Karma, Inheaven, Kagoule, Vant, and Moaning. I can't see myself ever not listening to new music.

This came in response to some clickbait about a teenager observing that she had heard of the Pixies because her grandparents listened to them. Following Mike's the aforementioned facebook twat's recommendation, I sought out Moaning - which really is the name of a band - but they sound like the fucking Mission; and Otherkin sound like the Strokes or the Fratellis - both of whom were shit first time round - and doubtless have a bright future composing theme songs for edgy Channel 4 comedies about teenagers having abortions.

New Forms won the Mercury Music Prize back in 1997, most likely thanks to some tiresomely self-conscious upper management twat who, much like Mike the aforementioned facebook twat, prefers his music to be new new new. The Mercury Music Prize has also been won by Primal Scream and something called Gomez so probably doesn't count for much in the great scheme of things. Anyway, possibly as a result of winning the Mercury Music Prize, Roni Size was on the telly singing a couple of his songs. They sounded decent so I made purchase of the album, but the thing jumped all over the fucking shop. It could have been big fat bass frequencies making for poor groove integrity, or it could have been a dud pressing on vinyl recycled from truck tires and the plastic bits of vehicular dashboards, what with it being the last days of the original wave of vinyl. I played it maybe twice, so it never had a chance to sink in, and I never got over my vague feeling of disappointment.

The thing is that I'd heard about drum and bass, and most of it didn't actually sound quite like I hoped it would - nosebleed breakbeat falling somewhere between Peshay's Piano Tune and I, Me, Mine by Godflesh, which probably doesn't even count. Drum and bass compilations seemed to feature a suspiciously heavy emphasis on all that deep forest shit, and some of it even sounded like - ugh - jazz. Then I discovered Panacea, so that was one itch well and truly scratched; and yet somehow I still picked this up on CD on the grounds that there wasn't much point trying to play the vinyl edition; and now, two decades later, I've finally managed to listen to it all the way though more than twice in the same year - because it's one fuck of a long album - building up to three or four times just this week, and finally I have an opinion.

I'm still not sure why New Forms won the Mercury Music Prize other than new new new and you probably won't have heard of it, but we have, and I'm not convinced of it being a landmark album; but it has impressive peaks, and nothing which truly sucks or outstays a welcome. I think the thing which confused me relates, more than anything, to my own expectations and related quest for a truly brutal drum and bass record which kicks your head in like no other. New Forms is really just a bunch of people pissing about in a studio, trying things out, some of which just happens to involve accelerated breakbeats. It's as much soul, dub, rap, ambient, techno, and even jazz - but in a good way, I guess - as anything. It's an album which never should have been square-pegged into a round hole by industry wankers with some giant medal burning a hole in their collective pocket, although to be fair I probably shouldn't have been so stupid as to grant such categorisation any sort of credence.

New Forms takes a while to sink in, but somehow does so as a coherent, mildly hypnotic whole - all thirty fucking hours of it. Brown Paper Bag still sounds insane after all this time; Watching Windows is gorgeous; and Hot Stuff - which I'd somehow never even noticed before - is one of those rare pieces of music which seems to be the same size as the sky. So I'm finally glad I bothered, not least because I might never have come to such an appreciation were I engaged in an endless, ostentatious quest for new new new.

Death Magazine 52 (2011)

The second proper gig I ever saw was Whitehouse at the Mermaid in Birmingham on the 27th of August, 1983 - here defining a proper gig as anything loud in a place selling booze and which wasn't my parents taking me to see Barbara Dickson, whenever that was. Whitehouse were supported by the excellent Family Patrol Group and D. Mag 52 / SHC - as they were billed on the poster - who were interesting but not as good, just a loud wall of noise, like Family Patrol Group but somehow lacking the dynamic. I struck up a correspondence with Colin of Family Patrol Group, who told me that the name of the other band was short for Death Magazine 52, and that they sometimes played as Spontaneous Human Combustion but still hadn't decided which name they preferred.

I'm not in D. Mag 52 / SHC, but the other two are. I'll give you the D. Mag 52 / SHC potted history if you like. Originally a large band of around nine members, fluctuating line up depending on who could attend, no rehearsals, just found instruments before gigs usually. Mainly metal bashing, drums, and other percussion, like Test Dept at times. Slimmed to five, four, or six piece - then mainly metal, tapes and vocals. Then down to two hardcore members - others thrown out or dissuaded. No gigs, but still fluctuating as people replace one another. At the Mermaid, Simon was helped out by a friend. The other hardcore member - Paul - was on 'holiday'. Truth is he was a bit embarrassed at supporting Whitehouse. I think he felt it was pointless trying to compete with them, as we all did, but nevertheless we didn't bottle out. After Family Patrol Group degenerated to nothing, mainly because of my absence at Sunday afternoon jamming sessions, Mike Grant, Family Patrol Group vocalist, was looking for gigs to play as D. Mag 52 / SHC, playing alongside Simon and Paul with Greg, our tape person. They got two, one at a pub which has a regular free spot on Monday evenings, and the second was at an all day festival where Nick Lowe was the main artist. They got ₤100 to play this, but I was told they used ₤80 in preparation by going into the recording studio to record backing tapes. I think it may have been Mike Grant's idea as he had not been into a studio before and was quite keen to do so. Anyhow, I didn't go to either of the above two, mainly due to Mike Grant falling out with me. Nothing serious, just once when we were in a pub he ignored me and he's never spoken since.

So they were watchable but nothing amazing, possibly having strayed from their sonic comfort zone for fear of sounding like a Level 42 tribute act when opening for Whitehouse. They made grating electronic noises with boxes and pedals, leaving me without much reason to remember them beyond just something I'd seen at some point. All the same, I was quite excited when I heard Harbinger had put out this posthumous collection on double vinyl, a release implying hidden or previously unknown qualities because otherwise, there would be no reason for so lavish a reissue of material by a group we'd all forgotten, even those of us who'd actually heard of them in the first place.

Now, thirty or so years later, Colin's description makes a little more sense, because it didn't seem to describe the group I'd seen at the Mermaid; and I suspect some of the studio material included here may be the very same as he described above.

What we have is a fairly early noise group, certainly pioneers in that whole Birmingham noise scene which yielded the likes of Final, Con-Dom, Smear Campaign, and ultimately even Godflesh and Napalm Death - and it's certainly significant that Mike Dando of Con-Dom was in one line up of Death Magazine 52. I've a feeling that may even be a picture of him on the back cover with the Tears for Fears haircut. This is a noise group before everything got caught up in the arms race to see who could be loudest, Naziest and most pornographic, back when we were all just fucking around to see what would happen; and amazingly, although I expected this to be a complete racket, it turns out that Death Magazine 52, left to their own devices, occupied a patch of weirdy musical hinterland roughly equidistant from Einstürzende Neubauten and 23 Skidoo - blowing, banging, some tapes, and plenty of rhythm. It was never anything unique, but this collection really captures the excitement of a young band trying shit out and seeing what happens, and even trying that shit out in front of paying audiences - as can be heard on the live disc which notably includes a gig at three in the afternoon at some girls' school, and then at the increasingly legendary Equinox Event with Philip Best, although I'm not sure if he was on stage or is simply the loudest voice shouting bollocks as the cops show up towards the end of the tape, yet again.

The quality is a little basic but decent for what it is, and Death Magazine 52 will never be remembered as anything particularly important or seminal, but nevertheless these two discs really capture something a lot more vital than whichever improvised feedback bore you paid fifty squid to see at the South Bank this week.

Godflesh - Streetcleaner (1989)

Funny how certain things send you straight off in search of a particular bit of music. This one came back to me through the reproduction of a Daily Mail cartoon likening Muslim refugees to a plague of rats infesting host countries, just as Nazi cartoonists once made the same analogy with Jews; and the first track here is Like Rats which, aside from the parallel title, pretty much summarises the shittiness of a world run almost exclusively for the benefit of horrible Daily Mail reading cunts.

I was introduced to Godflesh with Us & Them, but for some reason have only recently begun to venture further into their back catalogue. I'm not sure why being as I love the shit out of Us & Them; although with hindsight, it's weird to consider that it's almost their album of uptempo pop songs, at least compared to this beast.

Actually, I suppose I was introduced to Godflesh - or at least to Justin Broadrick - much earlier when he recorded tapes of electronic noise as Final, and a few of his tracks appeared on the same noisy cassette compilations as some of my own stuff. I don't recall much about the music, beyond that one track was called Belief, but the fact that I remember it at all suggests it had something going for it. Also, the transition from power electronics to this sort of noise metal makes a lot of sense, and whilst Godflesh weren't the only band to go down that particular road, they remain the most listenable of their kind for my money - possibly excepting Ramleh who were kind of going for a different thing anyway.

Where Us & Them seems to share some kinship with Killing Joke or even Joy Division, Streetcleaner is a different, more primal monster. This one isn't so much songs as power electronics with riffs and a drum machine. Ordinarily, much as I love Brer Drum Machine, I'd raise an eyebrow at his use under circumstances where an actual drummer would have sounded so much better - like on Big Black's otherwise astonishing Atomiser, for one example. Streetcleaner initially sounds like it could do with a human bashing the skins, not least because the drum machine here is clearly programmed to have more or less the same effect as John Bonham, but after a few listens the reasoning for the choice becomes clear. There's something about the impersonal quality of a drum machine and the very fact of it being a machine which works so well. Music reviews employing the term jackhammer in reference to rhythm seem a bit of a cliché, but this one really does sound like that. It rocks like fuck whilst nevertheless resembling some inhuman mechanical process occurring inside the meat factory, the sort of thing with a start button and that big red plastic mushroom you bash to shut the whole system down when some poor fucker falls in and loses his legs. Add to this massive riffs delivered like concrete blocks onto a loading bay from the back of a truck, over and over and over, and every single one of them landing on your fucking foot.

It's huge and brutal, possibly an heir to the Swans, except Cop seems surprisingly subtle by comparison despite equivalent soul-crushing weight. Extremity has become a bit of a minefield in musical terms as of at least the last decade, mainly thanks to too many industrial types coming to resemble the enemy in their relentless invocation of the violence of civilisation. In fact I'm surprised there hasn't yet been a pro-UKIP power electronics act coming through, but give it time. Godflesh at least seem to have remained true to the spirit of dissent informing earlier generations of noisy buggers, the Grey Wolves for example - whom I mention partially because they're about as dark as it gets and I know they're good lads, and also because I know one of them occasionally reads this stuff, and because for the sake of argument I suppose Godflesh are the Grey Wolves with tunes, just about, at least in terms of what they do to your ears, brain, and arse.

It's hardly pretty, but then neither is the world which has inspired this particular hour long howl of rage, and sometimes it helps to be reminded of the fact with no punches pulled.

Xzibit - Restless (2000)

I don't know if the mark of musical quality can be attributed to being able to remember where you were when you first heard a certain song, or when the brilliance of a certain song first occurred to you, but I suspect it could mean that you really have something if it works the other way round - a specific kind of weather compelling you to dig out a particular record, as was the case here. I played Restless to death when I first got hold of it, all morning on my Discman as I trudged up and down Barry Road shoving poll tax demands and pizza advertising through letterboxes. I listened to that thing over and over, and now associate it with one hot day which had gone on far too long, culminating with fish and chips from Semas Fish Bar - the best chippie in East Dulwich by a wide, wide margin - then falling asleep on the couch for the rest of the afternoon. Restless invokes hot blue skies, palm trees, and cars that go up and down more than it does south London chip shops, but I'm sure you know what I mean, or can at least make the effort to shut up and just take my word for it.

Today being the warmest day that we of San Antonio, Texas have thus far enjoyed this year, following a wet and fairly miserable winter by our subtropical standards, I went outside, noticed how I am now living in a place with hot blue skies, palm trees and cars that go up and down fitted as standard, and realised how long it had been since I played Restless.

Xzibit was probably better known as the bloke from the version of Pimp My Ride which thankfully didn't have Tim Westwood looming around with his weird nose crease, ludicrous accent, and all that twisted shit he did with his hands; or you may recall him from that yo dawg meme which got old pretty fast, unless you discovered it fifteen years after everyone else whilst watching The Bing Bong Theory and then went around repeating it whilst somehow imagining that this constituted being down wit da yoots dem; or hopefully you may recall Xzibit as the first lyricist to draw a bit of attention back towards the west coast in the wake of Death Row Records dropping the ball - attention in this case meaning the likes of The Source and XXL who hadn't really been taking too much notice of that side of the country.

Xzibit's first two albums were decent, but not astonishing, at least not in the same way as Restless is astonishing. His third strike seemed to come through during that millennial west coast push which also brought us Dr. Dre's 2001 and Snoop recording albums you could play more than once, but Restless is easily the most lyrical of the lot.

That said, lyrics were never Xzibit's problem, and where this one succeeds is in eschewing the undergroundisms of the previous two, opting instead for big, brassy Dre-style beats from Battle Cat, Soopafly, DJ Quik and the man himself, amongst others. The sound can be generally characterised as placing the listener's head inside the bass drum with basslines squirted out of cartoon toothpaste tubes beneath the pounding fists of Tom & Jerry tough guys. In terms of heavy it makes Godflesh sound like someone tapping a biscuit tin with the end of a pencil, but much happier because the sun is out, and the car is going up and down just as it should.

I can drink a whole Hennessy fifth,
Some call that a problem but I call it a gift...

Being associated with Tha Alkaholiks crew - or Tha Liks if impressionable young minds are still awake - Xzibit has never been afraid to get ign'ant; which has always been one of his greatest strengths in my view, with that wonderful blend of ign'ant committed with the sort of vocabulary and dexterity more commonly associated with edumacated beret-wearing freestyle and its like. In this respect  our man shines brightly on Restless, particularly on Fuckin' You Right with its robust defence of touring debauchery as a forum wherein one may pick up all sorts of perverted new techniques specifically for the purpose of increasing the sexual pleasure of a wife or partner once the tour is done; and this he balances out with the like of Sorry I'm Away So Much, a genuinely moving address to his young son. It's this sheer range which makes Xzibit one of the greats; and whilst he's produced some fine albums since this one, Restless still sounds like the best to me.

Get your walk on,
Get your head right,
I know you feeling this shit,
Shit is dead right,
Get your bounce on,
Back that ass up,
Bitch, pass me the bottle,
Fill your glass up.

Yeah - I'd say that just about settles it.

NATAS - Wicket World Wide.Com (1999)

Excepting possibly Whodini's Haunted House of Rock from 1983, rap as a genre rarely dipped its toe into any vaguely gothic waters until the nineties when certain artists apparently concluded that the only way to take it any place beyond Straight Outta Compton was to just go all out and get with the man downstairs. It's still an odd mix, served best by Three-6-Mafia in the south, and probably NATAS from Detroit in the north. NATAS was formed around Esham, sometimes Esham the Unholy, who released his first solo album at the age of sixteen and pretty much invented Detroit rap. Specifically he termed it acid rap, drawing inspiration and imagery from the weirder, more theatrical end of rock and metal, returning again and again to dark, supposedly Satanic images as metaphors for the shittier aspects of human existence, and possibly because it pisses people off. The short version is that there probably would never have been an Eminem or an Insane Clown Posse were it not for Esham. He did it first and best where this sort of psychologically warped stuff is concerned.

NATAS - standing for Nation Ahead of Time And Space - comprises Esham, Mastamind, and TNT, the man with enough game to make the Virgin Mary suck dick and stash cocaine, it says here. They're part of the reason why I can no longer take so many of those power electronics acts seriously. Stood next to NATAS or Three-6-Mafia - both of whom it should be noted transmit their horror by means of toe-tapping beats and tunes that even the most musically inept milkman could whistle with ease - Whitehouse and their kind sound like some testy art gallery installation, everyone stood around sipping fizz and congratulating each other on how shocking are their t-shirts. Stuck in a room with Whitehouse, one is left with a bit of a headache and the faint nausea of having scoffed too many vol-au-vents. Stuck in a room with NATAS, there's always the nagging fear that they might actually mean it. Even if it's all naughty words and exaggeration and comedic bragging amounting to a nutcase waving a gun in your face, and a gun that is quite clearly only a water pistol, the threat is voiced with such force that whether the weapon is real or not is probably the least of your worries. NATAS is fucking crazy; but in a good way, possibly.

Which brings us to Wicket World Wide.Com - wicket here being wicked shit as the term referring to acid rap or whatever you want to call it, as distinct from anything to do with cricket, or for that matter musical theatre, vodka-based alcopops, or the hearty endorsement of Sophie Aldred. I'm not sure if this is the best NATAS album, but it's the best I've heard, and it's difficult to imagine one better. Musically it has its own sound, existing at a sort of tangent to the rest of hip-hop, a crisp electronic production invoking the likes of Front 242 as much as any of the more obvious sources of inspiration. The rhythms feel like knives sharpened, contrasting neatly with a deep, warm bass and the sort of virtual arrangements that don't quite exist in nature, or at least didn't when this came out; and it rocks like anything recorded by the Rollins Band without much in the way of guitar or even anything resembling the dynamics of six-strings and an overdrive pedal. Also, it's convincingly terrifying for the most part, at least up until the last few tracks which begin to take a less screw-faced tone, coming as something of a relief after the first somewhat intense hour; and the nutcase with a water pistol factor described above means that even minor instances of dating - Cyberkill, WWW.COM and others which no doubt seemed pretty fucking futuristic in 1999 - retain their menace regardless.

All of this Wicket World Wide.Com does without sounding too much like anyone else, inspiring any skips towards the next track in line, or whilst standing in an art gallery wearing leather trousers and screaming. You've gotta kill us to stop us, they promise on Metropolis - the song that Godflesh probably would have recorded had they been young black males growing up in Detroit - and this album, exhausting and addictive as it is, leaves you in no doubt of the fact.

DMX - Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood (1998)

Much like The Damned's Machine Gun Ettiquette, this is one of those albums that may not be the greatest record ever made, but sounds like it could be whilst you're listening to it; or it does to me anyway. In terms of brooding introspective menace, DMX always struck me as likely inspiration for the character of Omar Little on The Wire, but he was never a serious contender for world's most amazing lyricist. His strength lies in the power of his delivery, the screw-faced intensity of his artistic vision; and in any case no-one ever quacked their pants whilst listening to a Talib Kweli record. This was his second album, the one that moved things up a notch from It's Dark and Hell is Hot to form a near perfect rap album, despite this apparently being impossible for anything that sells triple platinum without containing at least one track about the joys of eating a delicious Harvest Crunch bar whilst doing a finger painting of that nice Bob Marley - criteria for perfect here being how close it gets to doing that which it sets out to do.

Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood sets out to psychologically profile the life of the artist from the inside looking out, capturing a filmic intensity which parallels the more harrowing moments of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now or any other widescreen quantification of life as both precious and yet unfortunately cheap. To rephrase that without the poor fit of my unimaversity edumacation, it's the blues with specific reference to Robert Johnson stood waiting at the crossroads for the man downstairs, or maybe the black New York Nick Cave; something that involves a lot of blood and not many smiles.

Whilst angry rap albums may not exactly be a limited resource, this one works because it resembles nothing that came out before or since - not even other DMX albums. For starters, Swizz Beatz who produced ten of the fifteen tracks was really firing on all cylinders when he built these songs up from those weird plinky-plonky beats - clipped snares that could have been lifted off an old Synsonics toy drum, Casio keyboard style pizzicato strings, and even that dollar store scratched record effect that probably came from some video game. The guy seemed to go out of his way to find cheap, artificial sounds, making them work in spite of themselves, pinning it all down with a measured bass throb; repeated keyboard smash notes turned into a melody, finally subtracting as many elements from the song as it can stand to lose without falling to incoherent pieces and so leaving us with this big empty space, like a cathedral made out of broken plastic toys and cheap Taiwanese electronics. DMX's violent, almost masochistic growl is thrown into sharp contrast against such a soundtrack, carrying a weight that's positively old testament. It's at least as intense as the cover implies, but nonetheless essential, educational and even inspirational listening, and - just so we're absolutely clear on this - DMX is not suggesting listeners try any of this at home. He already has quite enough of his own problems, in case you're a moron and somehow failed to notice the utter dearth of glamour or lifestyle tips.

Finally, it still astonishes me how something which - on close inspection - sounds quite so avant-garde, quite so unlike anything that had been before, managed to sell by the truckload and clog up the airwaves for at least a year; but of course, being a multi-million selling rap album means it went above the radar for many based on the idea that the musically adventurous must by definition be obscure and unpopular. It's bollocks really. Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood makes Godflesh sound like Haircut 100; most experimentalists may as well be Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen by comparison; and yet it sold so well they couldn't press the fucking thing fast enough when it first came out.

This record is a masterpiece.