Tracklist:
01. Fat Intro
02. (8 Pints of) Venom
03. Speech Therapy
04. Member's Only ft. Rola
05. Split Lips
06. Animal
07. Fat Club 101
08. Beware! Monstrous Powers!
09. Can't Do This
10. Taste the Blood of Fat Club
11. Itchiban Monk
12. Open Ears & Broken Tears
13. More Than Hip Hop
14. Tales from the Cipher
15. Never Pass the Mic ft. Monkey Moo
16. Devil's Due
17. Last Words
18. Members with Horns
19. Beware! Monstrous Hidden Remix! |
Turroe and Bulletproof Monk
return with a second helping of cholesterol-saturated, heart-clogging
hip hop, ship shape and Bristol fashion… this CD-only release is 19
tracks deep, and picks up where Worth The Weight ended – the south-west
twang is still in full effect, the production a little bit more polished
and the music and lyrics are, in places, much more adventurous, if a
little eccentric.
Personally, I’ve been tracking this one down for a while – having
enjoyed their debut release back in 2003 I was eager to hear if they’d
taken their style to another level. Worth The Weight was quirky,
under-produced, but worth a listen; would Venomous Tongues tickle the
taste buds more?
From the funky guitar “intro” with ‘thug/original gangsta’
commentary twisting into the PE beat sampled “(8 Pints of) Venom”,
the foundations are set for an album of traditional hip hop samples
spliced with sometimes intelligent, but on the whole humorous lyrics,
some verging on the ‘risqué’, and a generous scattering of the ‘c’ word.
Various movie clips are used to drive the album along, including the
usual suspect Fight Club.
The one thing that strikes me with this album is that most of the music,
albeit trying to be adventurous, lacks a little structure at times and
some of the tracks don’t work as well as they should. For example, “Speech
Therapy” has some wonderful spoken samples which are then
interspersed with some Turroe/Monk lyrics. It seems to me that they
wanted to do something along the lines of Jurassic 5’s Lesson 6 The
Lecture, but when the song gets going there are some samples hastily
placed clashing with verses spat by the Club, plus the music doesn’t
really change too much; yes there are breakdowns, but the note
progression of the sample doesn’t change, a little re-arrangement might
add more to the song.
“Members Only” is Fleapit-style all the way. On first listening,
it starts just like it could build up to be some old Britcore track,
some guy screaming shut up, fuck you, you fucking dick… underneath that
there’s a very harsh beat building which then suddenly shifts into a
riff-driven, funky ‘handclapped’ sounding beat. Rola, another solid
Bristol MC from Numskullz, makes a guest appearance here, dropping a
verse to finish the track off. This one bounces along quite merrily,
putting the album back on track.
“Beware Monstrous Powers” is the ‘I know what you did last
summer’ of this collection of tunes… hard beat, a bit of gentle guitar
strumming weaving its way in and out and standard Fat Club lines like
“fucking with me is rare and very risky, like Ian Huntly caretaking
where your kids be…”
“Can’t Do This” sums up not only Fat Club’s but most peoples
frustration in attempting to make a living out of hip hop. A quirky,
scratched up beat is the foundation for this one, a style which is not
often attempted by British artists.
“Taste The Blood Of Fat Club” has only one intention; to chill
your spine. The sample stomps all over the beat, strangling the kick but
letting the snare breathe. The lyrics are strictly horror; “…I smell my
own decay, I need to see the light of day…”
“Open Ears and Broken Tears” displays a softer side, a lilting
piano break, the beat not so harsh, the tempo taken down a notch and
lyrics straight from the heart; “So once again I’m stood here alone all
joking aside, and whatever I said the first time yeah you heard right,
view the real world through open eyes, spew tears with no disguise,
stood firm with crews and peers then broken ties, that’s why sometimes I
lie awake at night as I write my pen cries, my pen cries…”
“Devil’s Due”, with its driving heavy guitar sample is, for me,
along with “Open Ears…” are probably the strongest tracks on the
album. A string intro soon sees a scratch coming in, the beat commences,
then the guitar drops in… this track unlike the rest returns to the
usual hip hop structure; verse, hook, verse, hook, which adds an element
of not necessarily commercialism, but an ease of listening which doesn’t
appear too often anywhere else on this CD.
“Last Words” is just so dark, and quite unique; very heavy string
samples and a summary of suicidal thoughts, where ways to die are traded
with ‘go ahead and do it’ answers.
On the whole, this is an album with some excellent ideas, but lacks that
commercial element which would push it out to a wider audience. It will,
however appeal to all those who’ve enjoyed previous releases from that
neck of the woods, especially the likes of Fleapit, Aspects and
Numskullz. But, if you like to listen to American hip hop, or emcees
without dialect, then Turroe’s and Monk’s Bristol-twang and twisted
humour might prove too difficult for you to like or comprehend. It is an
acquired taste, but with perseverance well worth a listen. My taste buds
haven’t been tickled, more like trampled on by Special Brew with an
Aftershock chaser… how about yours?
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