Visions of Bodies Being Burned

It's cerebral, labyrinthine and self-involved.

Visions of Bodies Being Burned not only meets the quality of its predecessor, but it is also the perfect complement to it. The two feel like equal partners with the throughline being Clipping’s tribute to horror as a genre and examination of unforgiving depravity. Few listening experiences this year are as gripping, visceral, and vivid as Visions of Bodies Being Burned.

It’s a sharpening of the ideas introduced on Addiction to Blood, performed with clipping.’s classic graveness which only supports how scary this album can be.

Visions of Bodies Being Burned, like its predecessor, is macabre and monstrous in all of the ways that your leering curiousity would have it. It’s a taut exploration of hatred and hostility, one which stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its demonic older brother.

clipping.'s finest refinement yet of their abrasive horror-rap. [Dec 2020, p.87]

Visions of Bodies Being Burned is a smart, noisy joyride through your worst nightmares, but it's easy to imagine Clipping laughing maniacally while its listeners insist on sleeping with the lights on.

The combination of Diggs’s hyper-enunciated double-time flow, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes’s twisted industrial production, and high-concept albums strikes me as original.

The dread that percolates throughout the album comes from the ominous production and burly subject matter, but Daveed Diggs' quick-witted and masterfully controlled flows amplify the anxiety. Like the masked killer in a scary movie, Diggs seems supernaturally several steps ahead at all times.

It’s been said that every era gets the monster they deserve. If this is the case then ‘Visions of Bodies Being Burned’ is everything wrong, and right, with the world distilled into 52- minutes of absurdist hip-hop. We’ve never had it so good!

This album is a little less concept-narrative driven than previous releases, but not to any ill-effect. Instead, Clipping have reached both their most distilled output - this is a once-in-a-generation band reaching their peak.

It tries too hard to pay homage to horrorcore tropes, like the chopped-up horror movie samples and heart-pounding bass, and sounds too polished as a result. It’s horrorcore for people who don’t want to listen to the real thing. Clipping. is an incredibly innovative and talented group, especially in creating entire worlds within their songs, but at their most inhibited, they come off as try-hard.

clipping. never present themselves as resurrectors of horrorcore, and Visions’ songs are livelier than those on TEEATB, but the way the group embraces the style feels archaeological.