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- By date
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May 29, 2014Its idiosyncratic animus is something to behold, and even if you don’t like it, both the digital age and Burnett himself can reassure you with the verse, “Don’t worry; in a few, you’ll all be somewhere else.”
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May 29, 2014Its not as bare bones as NLDW, but it's every bit as in-your-face and aggressive as you would expect from a Death Grips record.
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May 29, 2014Unlike the blunt, confrontational NO LOVE DEEP WEB, Government Plates lets you think for yourself and even if it doesn’t have an agenda, that doesn’t mean it’s nihilistic.
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May 29, 2014[Government Plates] is bursting with kinetic energy and texture, and never focuses on one particular sound for overlong over its economical 36 minute run time. It's that sense of ever shifting energy and momentum that characterizes Death Grips best work and it's a relief to see it returned to.
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May 29, 2014Featuring minimal hooks, guttural yelps and harrowing production, Government Plates sounds like nothing else this year--so in other words, it sounds a whole lot like Death Grips.
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May 29, 2014Government Plates is a challenging listen, but as one of the most transgressive records of the year.
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May 29, 2014Their creativity is flowing at its peak and they are only concerned with music, and you should be as well.
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May 29, 2014This is transgressive art at its rawest and most chaotic, postmodern punk for the millennial age, and its ferocity is both a strength and a weakness, primal and indiscriminate, deeply felt and totally irrational.
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May 29, 2014An album so urgent and pressing that it often foregoes language for feeling, explanations for executions.
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May 29, 2014Somehow all these disparate parts click together and make Government Plates the most captivating Death Grips album yet.
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May 29, 2014Government Plates doesn’t strive to be a defining post-Epic statement, but it finds Death Grips fascinated with the possibilities offered by its sound and pushing it breathlessly forward.
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May 29, 2014Those instrumentals stop and start, throb and zap, sprint and lurch, empty out or swarm with noise, and they often completely switch texture in midtrack--the more disorienting the better.
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May 29, 2014Death Grips are at their best when they’re just being plain weird. Some of the attempts to fully reproduce various types of dance music fall a little flat – it’s a passable imitation, but the kind of people who like psytrance might not have much time for most of Government Plates.
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May 29, 2014Government Plates is a rap record, albeit one whose abstracted fury and next-level formalism make Kanye's Yeezus sound kind of quaint.
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May 29, 2014Government Plates is sometimes just incoherent.... But in the end these are minor quibbles.
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May 29, 2014The result is a sometimes great, sometimes merely serviceable album which can stand among Death Grips’ ample discography, despite occasionally sacrificing melody for amplified pandemonium.
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May 29, 2014Death Grips have always been a challenging group to listen to, but Government Plates is more migraine-inducing than head-nodding.
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May 29, 2014The focus is less on total mayhem and more on creating droning dystopian soundscapes that MC Ride might occasionally hop on to yell over.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 81 out of 111
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Mixed: 21 out of 111
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Negative: 9 out of 111
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Jan 16, 2016
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Mar 22, 2015
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Jun 10, 2014