Chuck D., Dave Lombardo
and DJ Spooky have teamed up to create a new heavy metal meets Hip-Hop album,
called Drums of Death.
According to Spooky, the album blurs the lines of various genres
of music.
“Right now it seems much more like everything has become
so compartmentalized,” Spooky told Wired Magazine. “I want to make
a genre that’s a blur — where your iPod is malfunctioning, and next thing you
know your hip-hop is in the rock section of your playlist, and your rock has
gone over to your dub section, and your reggae section is mixed into your jazz
and your classical music is sprinkled over everything.”
Spooky said that Chuck D. raps in a style more that will remind
the discerning listener of Public Enemy’s first two albums, Yo! Bum
Rush The Show
and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.Additionally, Slayer’s Lombardo was the only portion of
the album that was recorded live. Spooky said Chuck sent his files in for the
album.
Slayer’s sound should be familiar to fans of the group,
as Public Enemy sampled the group’s song Angel of Death on the hard rock
tinged – “She Watch Channel Zero,” taken from 1989’s
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us back album.
While Flavor Flav is absent from the project for creative reasons,
Spooky created a synthetic voice for the album.
“We ended up making a synthetic voice to replace Flav
that kind of evoked the same kind of call and response,” Spooky said.
“So Chuck D does his thing and instead of going back and forth (with Flava
Flav), it goes to the computer.”
Drums of Death
hit stores on April 26th.
