Stay Noided This Fall With Death Grips, Your New Favorite Band

Image Credit: Medium

Have you ever woken up and wanted to scream but made no noise? Or have you ever been interested in closing your eyes and sprinting through a treeless forest? If you or someone you know has ever experienced these symptoms, consider listening to Death Grips, the only known cure for this dire situation.

In 2011, music was forever changed with the release of Exmilitary, Death Grips’ first mixtape. Since then, they have released eight ambitious projects, including the cult classic The Money Store (2012) and their magnum opus The Powers That B (2015). After years of inactivity, the group debunked rumors of a breakup in a characteristically cryptic Instagram post of scrawled black ink over a framed drawing. On April 8, 2025, the band put out a message—“Despite rumor and hearsay, we remain active as Death Grips.” Their next artistic endeavor is sure to be exhilarating.

Death Grips embodies the despair-ridden electronics of Joy Division, the experimental psyche of Danny Brown, the vocal and instrumental freedom of Björk, and the angst of Nirvana. If you’ve ever bobbed your head to these artists, you’ll love Death Grips. The band’s style consists of grating and relentless percussion from drummer Zach Hill, frenetic hyperpop sample chops from producer and instrumentalist Andy Morin, and a combination of muffled shouts and deadpan spoken word from vocalist Stefan Burnett, aka MC Ride.

My ears were blessed by Death Grips during tenth grade when my friend played their 2012 song “Get Got” as a joke. It was hilariously awful. Weeks later, though, I found myself returning to the song over and over again. The initial humor was covering a clawing curiosity: what’s the point of Death Grips? The lyrics didn’t make sense and the instrumentals were corrosive to my senses.

The last few years of fandom and frequent listening, however, have brought me immense joy. “Up My Sleeves” (2015) is the song I scream bar for bar out my car window when driving, “Whatever I Want (Fuck Who’s Watching)” (2013) has been the soundtrack to many late night lock-ins, and “Ring A Bell” (2016) made me fall in love with music in general. Finding comfort in the abstract preachings of MC Ride and meditative bliss in the layered rhythms of Zach Hill and Andy Morin is the goal of Death Grips, the only sonic cure to all your problems.

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Quinn Ross is a freshman in the College majoring in Chemistry. He is pursuing a career in sliding into Anthony Fantano's DMs.