Year of the Snitch

Though it strains the mind to wonder how, Death Grips manage to get a little further out every time. Lighter but a lot weirder than 2016's industrial-adjacent Bottomless Pit, Year of the Snitch finds the Sacramento trio absolutely in their own orbit, a dissonant burst of hardcore, hip-hop, trance, video-game music, and free jazz with few patterns and fewer precedents. Yeah, it’s intense. Kinda negative too. But it’s also strangely beautiful, filled with collisions of unrelated sounds (the new-age synths of “The Horn Section” or “Linda’s in Custody”) and moments of release (“Hahaha,” “Streaky”) that flash in the murk like diamonds in dirt. This is music that teaches you how to listen to it.