DJ Spooky & Dave Lombardo

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Drums of Death is a collaboration between the relentlessly experimental hip-hop of DJ Spooky and drummer Dave Lombardo of Slayer and Fantomas fame. Is this another experiment in metal/hip-hop fusion? Yes, and no. And as such, it works better than most. Lombardo is a heavy metal drummer without peer. His big kit work — especially his on-the-edge cymbal work and furious tom-tom workouts — lends a weight and urgency to Drums of Death that anchors it and pushes it further than the inept nu-metal chart acts that shall remain nameless here. Excess is something Spooky has never been afraid of. His records are full of it. Sure, when it doesn’t work, it can be tiresome, but when it does, there is no one more utterly engaging. Spooky refuses to be reined in by what musical genres are “supposed” to sound like. Also on board for the project are Meat Beat Manifesto’s Jack Dangers, Public Enemy’s Chuck D (who raps on three radical remakes of tunes from his crew), and former Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid (who appears on about a third of the album’s 16 tracks). The science fiction theme on the cover art of Drums of Death is not inconsistent with the suffocatingly paranoid, chaotic futurism that the album offers aurally. The Public Enemy tunes — “Brother’s Gonna Work It Out,” “B-Side Wins Again,” and “Public Enemy #1” — work surprisingly well. Dangers’ guitar work on “B-Side” is a fine counterweight to D’s aggressive delivery, but it is Lombardo whose skittering and punched-up skin throb pushes the thing into the red. Spooky cuts up the breakbeats and an array of sonic washes give the track a new sense of currency.

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hip-hop, experimental, electronic, turntablism, indie
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Drums of Death
DJ Spooky & Dave Lombardo
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Top Tracks

1	A Darker Shade of Bleak	5
2	Brother's Gonna Work It Out (2005)	4
2	Guitar DJ Tool Element (Vernon Reid)	4
2	Quantum Cyborg Drum Machine	4
5	Sounds From Planet X	3
5	Incipit Zarathustra	3
5	Particle Storm	3
8	Public Enemy #1 (2005)	2
8	B-Side Wins Again (2005)	2
8	Metatron	2
8	B-Side Wins Again (feat. Chuck D)	2
8	The Art of War (Back to the Lab)	2
13	Obscure Disorder (Ghost Hacked!!!)	1
13	Terra Nullius (Cyborg Rebellion on Colony Planet Zyklon15)	1
13	Assisted Suicide (feat. Dalek)	1