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Alternative PressGutter Tactics is another collection on which fans of rap radicals Public Enemy and drone-metal heavies the Melvins can find common ground. [Mar 2009, p.116]
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I find it hard to find fault with their approach, which is same-y but laced with beats and rhymes so powerful they conjure the old ‘if it izain’t broke, don’t fixxit’ axiom.
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Disenchantment with the state of rap, and society as a whole, is a major underlying theme, but the statements never feel too preachy or in your face. Instead, the vocal freestyles hover just slightly above the music, delivered in an amorphous mumble that matches the sonic abyss of the background perfectly.
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The record’s crowning achievement may be how truthfully Dälek convey this ambivalence through music, and in so doing, capture the spirit of a world where tragedy looms overhead, where hate is scarily effective, and where the victim and the victimizer are often the same person.
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MojoGutter Tactics is their most approachable set to date. [Mar 2009, p.107]
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The opening Wright sample is a hard look back at a year most people would already rather forget, but it's a perfect intro for Gutter Tactics, an album that draws much of its strength from the same well of outrage and disaffection.
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Gutter Tactics recalls the anger of the recent past and memories we'd like to leave behind--perfect timing.
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The music is progressive as hell, but this feels less and less like the right thing to be concerned with.
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Under The RadarDalek may not be everyone’s idea of fun but splitting the difference between 2007’s "Abandoned Language’s" interstitial ambience and their nocturnal dins works well enough. [Winter 2009]
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Having explordd hiphop's darker alleyways for years, Gutter Tactics is at once appealing and familiar, yet resists understanding more than anything that springs to mind... or rather, complicates and perhaps even undermines its message.
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Refining Gutter Tactics' murky metal rap with subwoofer bass frequencies and fierce drum programming, MC Dälek and producer the Oktopus still find inspiration amid the noise.
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Dalek is like a fine beer...it is an acquired taste, but once you get past that part, it is delicious. This is demonstrated well on Gutter Tactics, his newest release.
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Dälek have refined their work but their work has no reaching trajectory.
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UncutGutter Tactics lets a little light in, though, the glimmering, shoegazey 'We Lost Sight' being the surest glimpse yet of redemption within the gloom. [Mar 2009, p.82]
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Q MagazineTheir fifth album builds on 2007's well-received "Abandoned Language," with MC Dalek's rhymes playing second fiddle to producer Oktopus's darkly imaginative soundscapes. [Mar 2009, p.96]
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As they see it, new president or not, America is still a menace to the rest of the world. This will never change, and apparently, entrenched as they are in a morose pit of doom and gloom, neither will Dalek.
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Gutter Tactics flow and overall rhymes pale in comparison to those found in "Abandoned Language." It is as if Gutter Tactics thick, doom sound that defined Dälek’s approach has now turned back and smothered any attempt at a unique change.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 5 out of 6
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Mixed: 0 out of 6
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Negative: 1 out of 6
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DavidJan 28, 2009Probably Dalek's weakest effort yet, but it's still great.