Full disclosure here: I’m not a huge electronic music fan. Something about phrases or riffs repeated 40 times just doesn’t bode well with me. Then there are bands like Girl Talk, who try to transverse every genre in one song, changing everything completely after four seconds, just when you were starting to dig it. So when Toronto’s electronic sweethearts MSTRKRFT proclaimed their next album would bring forth the Fist of God, I was a skeptic from the start.
The vowel-phobic electronic group was born not long ago in 2005. It is comprised of Jesse Keeler of now-defunct Death From Above 1979 (you know them, CSS wants to listen to them and have sexy-time) and Al-P of the band that has clearly not met select players in the WNBA, Girlsareshort. Fist of God is MSTRKRFT’s sophomore album, following the much-loved 2006 release of The Looks. During its hiatus, MSTRKRFT has remixed the likes of Bloc Party, New Young Pony Club, Metric and even Usher.
There is a definite seamlessness on Fist of God, but whether that’s a plus is up for debate. While the album lacks abrupt transitions that may annoy the listener, the format makes it sound like more of a super-long house track that has been arbitrarily split up into tracks. Of these sectioned tracks, many are gangsta, while the others are entirely something else.
The album opens up with the bouncy, dance track “It Ain’t Love,” featuring Lil’ Mo. Don’t quite remember where you’ve heard Lil’ Mo’s name before, in a world where “Lil’” precedes 50 percent of rappers’ names? Well if you happened to blink while she released her big (read: only) single, “Superwoman Pt. II,” you may have heard her featured on Ja Rule’s lost single “I Cry” (where Ja revealed his “soft thug” side). My major qualm with the song can be assumed for the entire album — the vocals take things one way, and the background music attempts to mold the entire song into something it’s not. “Bounce” featuring N.O.R.E. (think: “Oh boy, I came to party / Yo’ girl was lookin’ at me”) and Isis could be the next club hit. We get a male-female call-and-response of “All I do is party, ha ha ha ha / Bounce low, bounce high.” N.O.R.E. sounds like a self-aware misbehaver, and just like the former course registration system, Isis sounds pretty mean. The background beat is simplistic enough not to be distracting — it sounds like what a good techno-rap experiment should be.
“Heartbreaker” is a smooth break from an electronic melee with the help of John Legend. It’s more of a formulaic song — verses, a chorus — and therefore probably more tolerable and pleasant to non-electronic fans. And “real” instruments show their face on it, for all you purists out there — piano is essential to the beat of the track.
The track clearly delineated by MSTRKRFT as the best song to break a law to is “Click-Click,” featuring E-40 from The Click (not The Click Five). It’s very busy — it sounds like a laser tag dance party with a thug heist going on in the background. Honestly, sticking it to the man sounds a little silly in this one. I was more intimidated by Jay-Z going fifty-five in a fifty-fo.
The album ends with keyboard happy “Breakaway,” featuring Jahmal of The Carps. Its happy-go-lucky moaning backed by an army of synthesizers sounds more like a 90’s jam or Tahiti 80. It’s an enlightened, feel-good end to a weird ride.
Self-perceived omnipotence can be fun at times; but it seems as if MSTRKRFT hasn’t even called forth one divine fingernail. Fist of God might have some Death from Above 1979 fans saying, “Thnks fr th mmrs."
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