An Alternate Death Grips Timeline
Death Grips | |
|---|---|
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Sacramento, California, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 2010–2015, 2019–present |
| Labels |
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| Members |
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| Past members | |
| Website | deathgrips.net |
Death Grips is an American experimental hip hop group formed in 2010 in Sacramento, California. The group consists of producers Zach Hill (drums) and Andy Morin (keyboards), vocalist Stefan Burnett, also known as Ride, and Nick Reinhart as a guitarist and sampler. Though he is not the group's front man, Hill has been credited with being the driving creative force behind the project. Drawing from punk rock, electronic music, noise music, and industrial hip-hop styles, the band's innovative and often difficult-to-categorize sound has earned critical acclaim and a cult following, while their aggressive performance style and cryptic interactions with their fans and the media have gained widespread notoriety.
The group released their first EP Death Grips in December of 2010 and their studio album, BDSM (not) included, a year later; both received critical praise. They would create their own record label, Third Worlds in 2012. Their highly controversial album, FULL LOVE NO WAR came out on June 2, 2013 releasing with a cover that features Zach Hill's erect penis that was later censored on the 2017 rerelease. They'd also be featured in The Last of Us video game in 2013 with a song off of the aforementioned album. In late 2013, Björk, the avant-garde artist known for her vocals, featured 4 Death Grips remixes on her album, "Compilation Album Issue 3."
In 2014, Death Grips released NΣW WØRLD RΣΣVΣRS released as the longest Death Grips album so far, planning to be performed at Lollapalooza in August 2015 before being cancelled, which caused a massive riot outside of the venue that they themselves played at. During the period of 2015–2019, the Group split up telling their friends to "Stay legend" as the project was just a "conceptual art exhibition anchored by sound and vision." In late 2019, the group reformed and released a secret project they had been working on called "Butcher House" with Experimental hip-hop artist, Sematary. The lyrics on some of the songs were inspired by Berserk, a popular Manga/Anime that Sematary had watched.
In 2020, Come Here You Motherfuckers would release at 12:00 on September 13, 2020. The graphic music video combined with the visuals of the vinyl cover, album cover, and cd cover would make it the darkest project the musical group had made since its creation. More akin to Horror rap of the 1990s and 2000s. "THIS IS VIOLENCE NOW" was used in the Pete the Cat anime adaption developed by MAPPA. The album would win a grammy, becoming a small controversy due to how violent the album is. In 2021, they'd release their mixtape ExMilitary through their website.
In 2022, Death Grips began touring North America, and is still actively on that tour as of November 6, 2023, with the most recent concert being in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the Franklin Music Hall. The tour is expected to end on February 12, 2024 with 394 locations expected to be toured since November 2022.
History
2010–2011: Formation, Death Grips, and BDSM Not Included
Death Grips were formed in Sacramento, California, on December 21, 2010. On the same day, they recorded their first song, "DEATH GRIPS". It was released on December 29, 2010 with a video and free self-titled EP which featured the song alongside 3 other songs. On December 29, 2011, Death Grips released a free album known as BDSM (not) included, containing the track Face Melter (How To Do Impossible Things) from the self-titled EP. Throughout the fall and late winter, they played small shows while BDSM (not) included was spreading steadily throughout the internet and receiving raving reviews from music critics. The band was originally composed of Hill, Burnett, Morin (then referred to as Flatlander), Mexican Girl and Info Warrior, before stripping back to Hill, Burnett, and Morin only, with Mexican Girl credited solely as a feature on "Silent Screams in Leather", off of BDSM (not) Included.
2012–2014: Third Worlds Records, FULL LOVE NO WAR, The Last of Us, Björk Compliation Album 2013, and NΣW WØRLD RΣΣVΣRS.
Death Grips formed the record label, Third Worlds Records on March 12, 2012. On the same day, the group announced the album FULL LOVE NO WAR with an album cover that featured drummer Zach Hill's erect penis on it. Being seen as a provocative move by the general music industry as popular names like Jay-Z saying, "I appreciate the artistry and fearlessness behind FULL LOVE NO WAR, coming out on June 2, 2013. It's a bold move, and sometimes, you gotta disrupt to make a statement. It's all about pushing the culture forward. Respect to Death Grips for keeping it raw and real." After this move, the song "Big Tripper" off of FULL LOVE NO WAR would be featured in the beginning section of the game The Last of Us, releasing in 2013.
In late 2013, Björk would feature 4 remixes created by Death Grips on her Björk Compliation Album 2013. "Army of Me", "Cosmogony", "Thunderbolt", and "Sacrifice", Being featured on Compilation Album Issue 3.
In December 2014, NΣW WØRLD RΣΣVΣRS would be released with 23 tracks, being the longest Death Grips album before being dethroned by Come Here You Motherfuckers in 2020. It was released for free download on their official website. Death Grips were scheduled to preform at Lollapalooza in August, but the concert venue cancelled their performance before they could begin planning for it. Leading to a massive riot in front of the concert that the Band themselves played music at when the date arrived. Causing the biggest controversy in the music industry as of 2023, called "Death Grips-gate" Lollapalooza's concert would dip in sales for the first time from a period between 2014–2019. Stefan Burnett would later admit that he had no regrets about it, intending for this to be the reaction that the fans had as they had played at the riots themselves. NΣW WØRLD RΣΣVΣRS would become the most controversial album released by Death Grips until being dethroned by Butcher House in 2019, with the lyrics being heavily anti-capitalist, hardcore, horror rap-like and Anti-label, disbanding Third Worlds 2 years after it had been created, opting for a more independent route.
2015–2019: a Break
Death Grips were scheduled as a supporting act to tour with CLIPPING and Soundgarden in July but the group announced an abrupt disbandment, thus cancelling their appearances. An image of the following message, posted on their Facebook page, was written on a napkin:
We are now at our best and so Death Grips is over. We have officially stopped. All currently scheduled live dates are canceled. Death Grips was and always has been a conceptual art exhibition anchored by sound and vision. Above and beyond a "band". To our truest fans, please stay legend.
2019–2020: Butcher House & Collaboration with Sematary, Come Here You Motherfuckers
In September 2019, without any prior notification, Death Grips released a 25 track album in collaboration with popular Experimental hip-hop artist Sematary, who had just released his GRAVE HOUSE mixtape with Ghost Mountain. The song titles first letters spelled out the phrase "COME HERE YOU MOTHERFUCKERS" in reference to the then-unreleased album "Come Here You Motherfuckers, which would come out in June 2020. The 25-track album was released on September 13, 2019 through their official website which had been left untouched for years after their breaking up until being reformed in 2018. The 25-track album would be named the Album of the Year by Pitchfork and NME for its experimental attitude towards music production and lyrical craft.
In June 2020, Come Here You Motherfuckers would come out on deathgrips.net at 12 A.M. on September 13, 2019, when the traffic on the website is at its lowest. The group also uploaded a video to their YouTube page titled CHYM. It features footage of a crow eating the innards of a ran over rat with the album being played in the audio for 2 hours and 34 minutes. Death Grips also uploaded the three extra singles from the album, "DIE IN THE SUMMERTIME", "THIS IS VIOLENCE NOW" in late September. In November, they released a music video for Flowers that featured the Production of MAPPA and Galen Pehrson to create a 39 minute visual experience with the song. DIE IN THE SUMMERTIME became the highest rated single for 93 days in a row, being calculated by NME on December 31, 2020.
The album would receive a grammy for "Best Experimental hip-hop album of 2020" at the 63rd Grammy awards.
2021: The Exmilitary Mixtape
In 2021, the mixtape "Exmilitary" would be released for free on April 29, 2021, through Death Grips' official website. "Guillotine" has become one of the band's most recognized songs, with more than 93 million YouTube views on their music video as of 6 November 2023. Other tracks released as music videos include "Culture Poking", "Spreading the Bands", and "Tachyon". According to Andy Morin, the cover art "[is a] photograph that one of our members carried in their wallet for roughly 10 years straight. It’s a power object." The photo was eventually identified as "Bearded Man at Oenpelli", taken by Douglass Baglin in 1968 for his book "The Dark Australians" by him and David R. Moore.
2023: Current activity and 2023 tour
On May 12, 2022, Death Grips published a cryptic video of a moth with a heavy trance background, presumed to be a teaser for new music. In November 2022, Death Grips were announced as participants in the Sick New World, Outbreak Fest and Primavera Sound music festivals scheduled for summer 2023. These announcements were followed in December 2022 by the confirmation of a North American tour, the band's first in four years, scheduled from May to October 2023. The band has released several lines of merchandise with the clothing brand Praying, their collaborations beginning in March 2023, and continuing until the present day.
On May 4, 2023, Death Grips debuted a new preshow soundscape at Portland's Revolution Hall, featuring a complete version of the track that had been previously teased in the aforementioned moth clip.
On September 16, 2023, Death Grips performed at the Riot Fest music festival in Chicago, Illinois.
On October 13, the band cancelled a performance at the Fayetteville, Arkansas venue due to "Unforeseen consequences" and Andy Morin would later claim that he had premonitions that they'd prematurely end the concert there due to objects being thrown at them.
On November 6, 2023 in a historic first, a 16-year-old was crowd-surfed onto stage and was given the mic by MC Ride to rap along with the full 39-minute song "Flowers", "until [the 16-year-old] collapsed with exhaustion after finishing the performance."
Style
Influences
Death Grips' music combines a variety of styles including hip hop, punk rock, electronic, noise, and industrial. Their style has been categorized as experimental hip hop, rap rock, electropunk, industrial hip hop, and punk rap. The group is known for Ride's aggressive rapping style, alongside their noisy and often chaotic production style and bleak and cryptic lyrics. They have also received attention for their highly energetic physical performances and stage presence. Their live performances are notable for antics such as the destruction of instruments, their complete absence at one of their scheduled shows, Hill drumming to the point of severe injury or performing in handcuffs, Ride's intense and chaotic stage persona, and Morin's use of live sampling alongside his improvised synthesizer flourishes and violent dancing.
They are also notable for engaging in extended periods of live musical improvisation interwoven into their set as bridges between songs, typically performed on the fly by Morin and Hill. Ride has been known to adopt many different vocal styles on record and during live performances, such as shouting, screaming, spoken word-style talking, and even whispering. Morin's unorthodox style of production and sampling and Hill's noisy, fast, and unconventional drumming styles and patterns are also distinct features of Death Grips' sound.
List of artists influenced
In popular culture
Anime
Anime is a hand-drawn and computer generated animation created in Japan, Outside Japan and in the greater world; Animations created in Japan is commonly known as "Anime." Death Grips have been mentioned many times throughout the anime industry throughout the 2010s and in the 2020s, with a huge advocator of the use of their music in anime being members Nick Reinhart and Stefan Burnett, including the animation company MAPPA.
Various songs off of their albums have been used for many animes during the early 2010s, late 2010s, and now the 2020s. References to Death Grips have also been frequent, with the cover of Season 5 of FLCL, "Shoegaze", being a reference to the infamous photo of Death Grips taken with Robert Pattinson, Beyonce, and Rihanna, being the most recent of theirs. (October 2023.) Their first referencing was in K-On!! (2010)
Their most frequent referencing is of the cover of FULL LOVE NO WAR due to the featuring of Zach Hill's erect penis, with the most recent reference to the cover being in No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular! Season 2 (2019) during a scene where Tomoko Kuroki is shown the album in a vinyl store, with her reaction being of disgust but also intrigue.
"Wha-what?! Tomoki, what kind of weird music are you into? I-I didn't sign up for this! Can't we just listen to something normal?!"
—Tomoko Kuroki
In response, her younger brother, Tomoki Kuroki, responds; defending the album.
"Haha, come on, Tomoko! It's just art, you know? You need to expand your musical horizons. Plus, it's Death Grips – they're not exactly conventional. You'll thank me later when you're a music connoisseur like me."
—Tomoki Kuroki
The longest reference of Death Grips in an anime would be in MAPPA's Pete the Cat anime, with a scene of Pete the Cat meeting a group of delinquents. Some of them being voiced by Stefan Burnett and Nick Reinhart. To which one of them would ask him about if he had listened to Death Grips, with Pete saying no.
"You ever listen to Death Grips?"
—Spots (voiced by Nick Reinhart)
Petes response,
"No, what's Death Grips?"
—Pete (the Cat)
Social Media
All of Death Grips are on Social Media but rarely do they use it for reasons outside of business, with Zach Hill, and Ride both using it exclusively for business. Andy Morin runs a instagram and website called A2B2. Nick Reinhart is the only member that is actively participating in conversations related to Death Grips and unrelated conversations in general.
Members
Current Members
- Stefan Burnett – electronic drums, vocals, lyrics
- Zach Hill – drums, electronic drums, production, vocals, lyrics
- Andy Morin – audio engineering, production, keyboards, lyrics
Tour members
- Nick Reinhart – guitar, sampler
Past Members
- Björk – vocals (2013)
- Sematary – vocals (2019)
Discography
Mixtapes
- ExMilitary (2021)
Studio albums
- BDSM (not) included (2011)
- FULL LOVE NO WAR (2013)
- NΣW WØRLD RΣΣVΣRS (2014)
- Butcher House (in collaboration with Sematary) (2019)
- Come Here You Motherfuckers (2020)
Compilation albums
- Compilation Album Issue 3–Björk (2013)