clipping – CLPPNG

If you're eagerly anticipating the return of punk-rap terrorists Death Grips, or thrilled by the pitch-dark, metal-enhanced goth-rap of BLKHRTS; if Kanye's Black Skinhead wasn't feral and intense enough to give you the feels, then LA's clipping are for you. The trio employ similar tactics on this lean, uncompromising album – it is replete with sheet-metal distortion, 808s that bang like helicarriers under missile fire, and ferociously-spit double-time lyrics.

Part of the album's intensity is down to front-man Daveed Diggs, whose rapid-fire delivery is an exact mid-point between Kanye's throwaway exhortations to twerk or eat his dick and the ferociously abstract, nihilistic poetry of MC Ride. Joined by some big name guests (Gangsta Boo of Three 6 Mafia, King Tee and others), he ranges between low-slung bumpers like Work Work, coming off like a more gangsta Cool Kids; to the cut-and-paste noise terror of Williams Mix; to the spectral, Antipop Consortium-like minimalism and abstract poetry of Dream.