Last Friday, on the final night of summer, my friend and I waited eagerly amid throngs of concertgoers at New York City’s Brooklyn Steel. We stood at the foot of the stage, chatting with other merch-clad fans, trading setlist predictions with bated breath while passively playing Subway Surfers (and repeatedly crashing into boxcars while at it). As the temperature dropped outside, things were about to heat up inside the music venue. We were there to experience a sold-out show by the Sacramento band Death Grips as they wrap up their 2023 North American tour. Formed in 2010, Death Grips is the product of vocalist Stefan Burnett (aka MC Ride), drummer Zach Hill and keyboardist Andy Morin. Glitchy, chaotic electronica, coupled with booming hip-hop delivery and a punk ethos defines the group’s sound. Death Grips’ sonic repertoire threads through factory floors and computer mainframes to create music equal parts eclectic and abrasive, utilizing the musical aesthetics of grinding, distorted industry.
While the band took the stage, MC Ride leered at the crowd awash in red lights and screamed, “We came to blow your system!” Blaring atonal synths and garbled, pitch-shifted speech ripped across the venue as Death Grips began the night with “System Blower,” an anthemic set opener that flooded the listener in electronic viscera, sharp sounds and half-finished samples. “Cut straight to the chase like a shot of 180 proof/ Kill-o-watts riots, audio violence,” MC Ride bleated as the crowd broke into spasmodic glee. Waves of fans crashed against the stage railing, pushed in ebbs and flows of bodies by moshers initiating domino chains. Death Grips’ infectious primal energy only abetted the writhing masses below.
As the band moved into the buzzsaw guitar riff of their hit single “I’ve Seen Footage,” I was thrust into the mosh pit and felt bodies pushing forward, clattering against mine as I battled for even footing and orientation. MC Ride flowed through the song’s lyrics, rapping, “Mystery ’hind that death door/ Juke step electrocute the floor,” and I began to slip into the delirious primal energies flooding the venue. Suddenly, it was not so much a concert but a collective kinesthetic experience—sweaty, turgid and strangely physically invigorating. I began to slam forth in the mosh pit, carry crowd surfers overhead and grin eerily when the stray Doc Marten would collide with my temple.
Death Grips’ metal-esque aesthetics were perhaps ideally suited for the venue. Brooklyn Steel, once a steel plant, is now a general admission standing-room-only club hidden in a corner of North Williamsburg amid steel-clad storefronts of construction companies and contractors. Brooklyn Steel embraces this “industrial chic”—as I entered the venue, I passed under giant industrial-strength ceiling fans and rows of welders’ masks decorating the entrance. Its geometric architecture, expansive interior and bare, monotone gray interior perfectly mirrored Death Grips’ electronic soundscapes of coarse textures, irregular rhythms and atonal melodies. The young crowd excitedly piled into the main theater space, feeling like they were attending a clandestine show in an abandoned factory. In about an hour, the room would be dark, humid and packed wall to wall, with attendees thrashing to the music.
Of course, this is because the music invites physically demonstrative behaviors. Death Grips is a dark, caustic band, and their music explores themes of subculture, delusion and drug abuse, often using ironic perspectives to portray social disorder. The sixth song of the night, “Get Got,” examines chaos and illegality; the previously-mentioned “I’ve Seen Footage” details the narrator’s traumatic desensitization following exposure to an increasingly violent media cycle. A track on the later half of the setlist, “Come Up and Get Me,” details the narrator’s holdout against assailants he cannot separate from schizophrenic visions. Perhaps the most unrelenting song of the night was “Up My Sleeves,” which sees MC Ride shouting “I was conceived, by my disease, up my sleeves” with his entire body amid a frantic onslaught of looped vocals and groaning keyboards.
About an hour into the concert, I was drenched head to toe, twitching with muscular exhaustion, and still involuntarily headbanging to the hissing guitar and overwhelming reverb of the instrumental track “Runway H.” The track switched over, and a rare quiet set over the room before the band moved into their last (and perhaps most famous) song, “Hacker.” As soon as the song’s extraterrestrial keyboard melody echoed through the air, the crowd erupted in manic energy and returned to physical expression. A tide of bodies rushed toward the stage, jumping on beat with the lyric “I’m in your area/ I’m in, I’m in your area” and enjoying the song’s accessible tonal quality, a pleasant reprieve among Death Grips’ music.
Unceremoniously, the fluorescent house lights turned on, and the concertgoers began to filter outside. As I shuffled toward the door, I noticed the tops of my new Converse, a pristine white at the beginning of the night, were now completely caked in a layer of dirt from being trampled upon. I had a sweat-soaked shirt, beer-doused pants and crooked eyeglasses from an unintentional elbow to the face. My friend and I reconvened, hugged, and with exhausted bodies but giddy spirits, we stepped out into the crisp autumn night.