Live Performance Review: Death Grips, Tuesday 30.04.2013, 19:00, SWG3, Glasgow

This is a group I was aware of since last summer. From the first I heard about them I knew they had a reputation for extreme live performances. The album that they released (for sale) last year 'The Money Store' is an incredibly intense, hardcore industrial hippity-hop offering, which greatly appealed to me. It is not often I go for music that sounds this ominous, though every now and again I surprise myself by some of the sounds I am drawn to.

The gig itself...there was a support act. I don't know what they were called, though it does not matter as they were crap.

Death Grips was quite possibly the greatest sustained aural and visual assault I have ever been witness to; my hearing was not right for the whole of the next day. The lighting and in particular the use of strobe was extreme, to the extent that it appeared as though I was surrounded by changing photo stills while the music continued very loudly and the cumulative effect of all of this was to cause me to feel as though I was in a bubble.

The vocalist, MC Ride, was a very powerful performer and sustained the audience in a frenzy throughout. There was no let-up regarding the intensity and loudness of the music, so it could be said that the performance was one-tone, though then you don't go to a Death Grips show expecting ballads. The only show I have been to which was comparable to this in terms of sheer intensity was Rage Against The Machine at Glasgow Barrowlands in 1996. That Rage gig was one of the most memorable I have ever been to, only time will tell if I look back at the Death Grips show in a similar light.

Rating: 10/10.