GONERVILL
1/ Intro - Featuring Mic Doc & B-Style 2.26
2/ Victorious - Featuring Mic Doc & B-Style 5.02
3/ Bombs Are Bursting - Featuring Mic Doc & B-Style 1.42
4/ www.trunx.com - Featuring Trunks & Mic Doc 3.44
5/ Culado - Featuring B-Style 4.15
6/ Killy Hawk - Featuring Luke Sick of Sacred Hoop 2.40
7/ Electrocutioner - Featuring DJ Flare 3.15
8/ Loved Ones - Featuring Mic Doc 3.42
9/ Don't Piss Down My Back - Featuring Trunks, Messy Flesh & Mic Doc 2.35
10/ Mission : Destruction - Featuring DJ Flare 4.07
11/ Youth Man Sufferer - Featuring Luke Sick 4.07
12/ Man From Mars - Praxis live Featuring Nature Boy Jim Kelly 4.39
13/ Shock To The System - Limbomaniacs 192 Featuring Butthouse 6.53
Recorded at Gonervill, The View and Hot Tea Studios
Mastered by Mike Fossenkemper at Turtletone Studios, NYC, NY
Extrakd: beats, bass, guitar, synths; Brain: beats, Protools; DJ Flare: all scratches; (12) Bill Laswell: bass; Buckethead: guitar; Brain: drums; Jim Kelly: words.
2001 - Stray Records (USA), SR2300 (2x12")
2001 - Stray Records (USA), STRAY 2300 (CD)
The beats the Brothers produce aren't what I expected; they created something very different from the guitar thrashery my preconceptions had led me to believe they'd come with (although it isn't completely absent from the album. 'Culado' is a very restrained beat, built around some synth sweeps and little bleeps and snatched notes, though it should be pointed out that I don't like the overly-artificial sounding drum machine high hat they used. If that beat, and the simple looped refrains that appear elsewhere on the album are the better side of the Brothers' aural concoctions, then something like 'Killy Hawk' is representative of the lesser side. At first, the guitars seem suitably powerful and megalithic, but they rapidly descend into an uninspired mound of noise.
Emcee wise, the guests are mostly unknowns. The ditty "fat flows, nice clothes, fly hoes, mad bankrolls and no love for the po-pos" is taken up on two songs on the album, and it should tell you what to expect – not originality. Having said that, it's far more enjoyable to listen to the generic outpourings of Mic Doc and B-Style, as on 'Victorious', than Sacred Hoop's Luke Sick’s more self consciously boundary pushing attempts to tear the mic to pieces. All that remains to be said is that DJ Flare cuts well across the album, mixing funk with technique.
Actually, that isn't quite all that is left to be said. Unfortunately, there’s a few songs on here which are just dire, or completely uninspiring, and drag the score down quite a bit. These moments of sheer badness (not bad meaning good, natch) leave the listener with a bad taste in their mouth that really spoils the enjoyment of the album, even if most of the time this is a relatively rewarding release. Still, any album which has a sample of a bloke saying "don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining" on it can’t be all bad!
Beats : 3/5
Rhymes : 2.5/5
Overall : 5.5/10
Julien (courtesy of the
Hoes, weed and good times. Sometimes the stereotypes are just too true. The Freak Brothers vamp on old school soul grooves and kick out the brag raps. Got the roll, the ho, the blunt, everything you want, right?
Not me. I got bored quickly, and that doesn't happen everyday. The Freak Brothers just don't have a lot to say. At least, they don't have a lot to say that I haven't heard before.
Every once in a while there's some interesting beat work. But then the rhymin' starts, and boredom ensues. I hate to be so down on a disc, but this one just doesn't excite me in the slightest. I think I'll be like Thumper and exit now.
Jon Worley (courtesy of the