Album Reviews

Album Reviews: Gutter Tactics by Dälek

"I don't make records for shock value," underground hip-hop hero dälek says in the press release for his new album, Gutter Tactics. As a general mission statement, that's surely true. But it's hard not to be a little cynical about the choice to kick off an album–released a week after Barack Obama’s inauguration–with the fiery words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The issue isn't the message but the messenger; it's commendable to challenge conventional thinking, of course–and it's a valid point that, from certain vantage points, America herself has been a terrorist state. But to use Wright (hardly the first person to have these thoughts) in this context does, in fact, feel suspiciously like a shock attempt. It also inevitably puts the focus on Wright, not Wright’s point.

After that questionable start, Gutter Tactics gets more intellectually engaging; they have plenty to say for themselves. They aren’t overt political firebrands, but there's little mistaking their gist. Sonically, their brand of hip-hop (confusingly, dälek the group is made up of dälek the MC and producer Oktopus) straddles enough genres that they've toured with post-rock and hardcore bands. The beats are dissonant and distorted; Oktopus creates an industrial, apocalyptic backdrop for dälek's storytelling. The Achilles heel of Gutter Tactics is that sometimes the murky music threatens to bleed together between tracks and pull the lyrics underneath the sludge altogether. Unlike some of their peers, dälek's lyric sheet is a point of interest, and sometimes it's a bit too much of a scavenger hit to find the language beneath the angry, droning beats and effects.

Oktopus also pulls out some highly effective changes of pace as the album wears on. Early tracks like "No Question" and "Street Diction" give an indication of why dälek can comfortably sit on a bill with a hard rock band; "No Question" especially is guided not just by a hip-hop beat but by a grinding collage of noise beneath. But then "A Collection of Miserable Thoughts Laced with Wit" settles into an ambient–even pretty–electronic backdrop, a point of refuge and reflection that then surrenders to "Los Macheteros / Spear of a Nation," a politically charged tale that blends post-rock and hip-hop. The title track and the closing "Atypical Stereotype" continue along this unique road, and while it's not likely to make you sing along, Gutter Tactics has a way of getting inside your head all the same.

—Adam McKibbin
01.26.09