The countdown to Year of the Snitch is one. Northern California noise/rap group Death Grips are gearing up for another rambunctious outing of grinding, pounding, confrontational, seemingly anti-social music with the release of their newest album. And as usual, they’ve not announced a release date for the new album, so it could literally be released tomorrow (though Friday would make more sense). The album, which has a cover that could serve as an extreme version of the Rorschach test, evokes a lot of questionable imagery.

The video is hardly more comforting. It features MC Ride in a suburban roundabout, with the video imagery glitching as he rapidly “hops” about. It is interspersed with some black and white night footage, which is hardly a relaxing interlude for this video, which is equally challenging and enthralling. It’s all pretty seizure-inducing. The song itself breaks into a pretty captivating half-time breakdown, with Ride switching between full-throated bellows and some low-register mumbling. The song only lasts two and a half minutes, but it feels a lot longer – and that is meant as a compliment.

The last 30 seconds of the song mellow out a little (if you can ignore the occasional screams from MC Ride in the background), with a gentle beach side scene bracketing the picture. Despite the tranquility, it’s not enough to override the bizarre nature of the proceeding two minutes.

Death Grips caught a bit of buzz when it was revealed they had entered the studio with none other than Shrek director Andrew Adamson. The group’s most recent release before “Flies” was “Streaky,” another visual assault accompanied by the band’s manic noise-core hip-hop.

Photo Credit: Mauricio Alvarado