Dälek
Gutter Tactics (Ipecac, IPC109)
Many years ago in the pages of Musician magazine, Bill Flanagan classified punk bands under two categories: the ambition Clash-types who expanded the genre’s inspired primitivism, and the Ramones-style bands that played variations of the same tunes over and over again.
You could say that Dälek belong in the latter camp. Formed in New Jersey during the late 90s, Dälek were initially outcasts, too smart to play by indie rap’s rules of true school aesthetics. But since finding a home with Mike Patton’s Ipecac label for their 2002 breakthrough From Filthy Tongues of Gods & Griots, Dälek has found an audience among fans with experimental, noise and extreme metal tastes. Their subsequent output riffs on the sheets of sound built during Filthy Tongues, with slight adjustments in tone and melody. These shifting tectonic plates make for a cohesive discography, but it also creates grinding repetition, if not necessarily tedium.
The intro on Dälek’s fourth album, Gutter Tactics, promises explosions. It excerpts a September 16, 2001 speech by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ and former parishioner President Barack Obama’s bête noire. “Blessed are they who bash your children’s heads against a rock,†charges Wright, his voice rising into histrionics as he accuses America of propagating the same terrorism it experienced on September 11. “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, we nuked far more than the thousands in the Pentagon and New York, and we never batted an eye.
But Dälek – comprised of MC/producer Dälek and musician Oktopus — doesn’t capitalize on that fiery tirade and push the music into loud white heat. Instead, they let Gutter Tactics simmer and cool. “Who Medgar Evers Was†charges up like a carburetor, and guitar notes slash against the humming noise. Then a steady drumbeat starts up as the grinding fusillade spins. “The boom bap, it sparks revolutions,†rhymes MC Dälek with deadly seriousness. The same static drumbeat reappears many times, like an anchor amidst the storm. On “A Collection of Miserable†it runs underneath acoustic guitar plucks, echoing percussion and chiming melodies.
Far from throwaways, these are Gutter Tactics’ strongest cuts. Dälek uses familiar tricks – the whirring motor-like fuzz and the “funky drummer†type syncopation on the title track – to create delirious tension, like a time bomb that doesn’t discharge, but simply continues to tick. Even MC Dälek keeps his emotions bottled up, sticking to po-faced battle raps, intoned homage to civil rights martyrs and growling declarations of societal revolution. It’s a dazzling show, but it lacks release. At some point, you want Gutter Tactics to ascend from the sewer into the light – or at least blow the fuck off the manhole.
