Step lively! This album does advance, but the walk to get there is treacherous and the rocks below are jagged.

For starters, there’s the collaborative cut “Rainmen” by the Deep Puddle Dynamics. A heavy grooving bassline is the only thing that cements the lyrics to the track, but with lyrics like “you’re lost, between mold, and the mildew/if you spit that verse with bullets and tits I wouldn’t feel you” it really doesn’t NEED anything else. Brutal? You bet. In Sole’s own words, “walkin the fine fabric of time between Neitzche and Ice Cube, fuck alla y’all, never liked any of y’all in the first place.” Worrrrrrd.

“Savior?” rocks this same flavor, which seems to be what Anticon does best – collaborative groups over heavy bass. This time, Eyedea, Slug, and Sole split the mic time. Not really for the casual listener, this song is a deep meditation on self-awareness. Slug sums this up by saying, “Sometimes I reflect, sit, and wish that I was ignorant/ unaware of the poison, so I could enjoy sippin it” while Eyedea begs “for the mothership spacecraft to take me away from this purposeless Earth/shit it’s worthless”. This is hip-hop on a scale of pessimism previously unimagined.

Some of these songs though fail on the same basis “It’s Them” by Them attempts to syncopate each word with the beat, and then fade vocally in and out with the music, and then.. well, it’s just overreaching. It’s technically well executed, but it comes off forced. “Simulated Snow”. by Sixtoo actually has the same problem: he starts the second verse alliterating and just seems to be trying too hard, and his vocal has Guru’s monotone without his redeeming qualities.

Surprisingly, most of the albums lightest and dare I say happiest moments come during the interludes, apparently scratched by DJ Signify (the only Anticon turntablist credited in the liner notes). These songs plus his solo “Meditations” leave you yearning for more. Ultimately, this album both succeeds and fails for the same reason: it’s HEAVY. After hearing Buck 65 rap about wallowing in his own drunken pity, you may actually want to listen to a Mack 10 record just to cheer up. Sometimes the heavy- handedness works; most often on cuts featuring Sole, their most able and freeform lyricist. At other times, they just seem to be trying too hard to be morbid.