May 27, 2009

Album Review: MSTRKRFT - 'Fist Of God'

Never judge an album by its single

8 / 10 Casual radio listeners beware: MSTRKRFT are about to do it again. If you’ve heard Zane rinsing the John Legend-fronted ‘Heartbreaker’ and proclaiming it the sound of the summer recently, you need to know that the DJ duo have pulled this stunt before. Drop an airwave-pleaser into the water to hook the unsuspecting in before unleashing merry hell on their ears and nervous systems over 10 more Zeus-heavy tracks.

Just like ‘Easy Love’ misrepresented ‘The Looks’ and sucked everyone in to its sonic hailstorm, the mellow house-pop track ‘Heartbreaker’ is dangerously unrepresentative of ‘Fist Of God’. The rest of the album is a non-stop synth-heavy holy roundhouse that batters you relentlessly, from the title track’s pummeling of cut-up vocal loops and titanic bass to the death ray synths of ‘So Deep’.

Peppered with hip-hop connections (E-40, Ghostface Killah, Freeway), equally informed by raw Chicago house and the riff-worshipping of Jesse’s previous (DFA 1979), and finally free of the omnipresent vocoder, it’s near-essential stuff. The Yanks dismissed this album too quickly when it came out over there. Don’t make the same mistake.

Tim Chester

More on this artist:
MSTRKRFT NME Artist Page
MSTRKRFT MySpace