$UICIDEBOY$ - Eternal Grey (2016)
When $UICIDEBOY$ were teasing this album a year ago, they made it sound like it was going to be their absolute best work to date. I mean, they even dropped "RADICAL $UICIDE" as a little teaser for the album, if that tells you anything at all about how confident they were, and I can see why: This is a fucking great album. This is something to really hold a lot of pride for, if anything, just to say "I did this", but.. I don't know if -everything- worked out exactly as it should. On this album, both $crim and Ruby da Cherry seem to take influence from Eminem's 2009 album "Relapse" by experimenting with their flows by occasionally adding accents into the mix, and I really fuck with it, even if it seems like they're mainly just using Arabian accents as opposed to really varying this shit, but then again, I wouldn't even fucking want to risk them possibly trying to do a Chinese accent. I think that really opened up their possibilities flow-wise, with a great verse (that I sing in my head sometimes) from Ruby da Cherry being in "Eclipse", and wouldn't you know it: If you ever had to defend your love for these rascals as being "THEY'RE NOT LIKE BROKENCYDE AT FUCKING ALL" then you're gonna lose your fucking ass on that one when "I Want to Believe" kicks in and suddenly you have both of them screaming on a track. Don't get me wrong: The song KILLS but FUCK, dude, "I'm Not a Fan, But the Kids Like It!"
The production on this album is pretty fucking great (as is with most releases in their discography, really) and you can even play a drinking game with it: Every time a song starts out with a sample, a cool little sound, etc, and then suddenly kicks in with the sub-bass, take a shot and wonder "With a formula this repetitive.. How does it not get stale?!" but to its credit, this album's production actually gets across a feeling of numbness, and dare I say it.. IT SOUNDS FUCKING GREY. Seriously! There's no way you can hear a track like "Chariot of Fire" and hear it as being any other color than grey, and that's not the name of the album influencing me into thinking that. While we're on the subject of production, though.. Can we acknowledge how fucking sinister "Water $uicide (Feat. Chris Travis)" sounds? And holy shit, that's one of the best verses I've heard from a guest artist (that isn't Pouya, Ramirez, or Germ, mind you) on a $UICIDEBOY$ track! Chris Travis' verse makes me wanna headbutt people in a fucking mosh pit! Fuck! The Americans like to say "Fuck" when they're excited, don't you know? But if we wanna talk killer guest verses.. You know what song I'm talking about. "Ultimate $uicide (feat. Denzel Curry)" introduced me to Denzel Curry, and in addition to that song being an absolute fucking bloodbath (fun fact: it uses the instrumental to $crim's "Demon$" off of "Patron Saint of Everything Totally Fucked"), Denzel's verse is fucking KILLER. This album has two of the best guest verses (Aside from the staples, like I said) I've ever heard on their music! What a DEAL! WOW! FUCK!
"Eternal Grey" does have two problems for me, though, and the first one is that "BREAKDALAW2K16 (Feat. Pouya)", a track showing homage to the Three 6 Mafia original, starts off the entire album.. And doesn't even come close to setting the right mood for it. It's a good track, yeah, but it's not -great-, it doesn't sound anything like the other tracks, and makes me wonder if they included it on this album purely to help rake in plays from Pouya's fanbase, which, as you might know, never lets the man even go to take a fucking piss without blowing up his phone asking "WHERE $$2 AT", so.. R.I.P. that poor guy's sanity. The other problem I have with this album is the fact that while it's all great, and there's not a track on here I dislike by any means, it's relatively inconsistent. It flips between brooding, dark tracks and.. Well.. LESS brooding, dark tracks pretty spontaneously, which is pretty awkward when you go from "275 $uicide (feat. Yung Simmie)" to "Lucky Me" immediately afterwards, or even "Ultimate $uicide (feat. Denzel Curry)" to "Leave Your Things Behind II", it can be a shock, I guess, but who knows, maybe that's what they intended. Still, I think this is a great album, and Slimjim and Rudy da Huxtable did a great job on it. GREAT SHIT! AHHHH!!! TURN THAT BEAT UP LOUDER OH YEAHHHH!! OH DAMN, PARTNER, YOU GOT MY ASS DOIN' A LITTLE SHAKE!!
8/10
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Feel free to stream this album for FREE or buy it from $UICIDEBOY$' Bandcamp!
