Would it be really reductive and pointless to devote a large chunk of my review of ‘Operation: Zombie Nation’ to ridiculing this apocalyptic rap posse’s atrocious moniker? Perhaps, so I shall sidestep it, try to put it to the back of my mind and give the album a fair listen.
It does start off pretty promisingly, too: ‘The Panic’ has a lengthy intro, a cut-and-paste collection of samples culled from TV news reports on riots, protests and lawlessness. The sense of confusion and fear builds palpably before a jittery beat begins a slow fade-in. The rapid-fire lyrics are delivered in short, urgent bursts, and the news cuts keep on coming. It’s simple, but effective.
It’s a shame the same can’t be said for the rest of the album. Well, it is simple I suppose, but effective? No, it’s woefully predictable. Musically, it’s bearable and in places extremely well conceived and executed, but lyrically? It’s really, truly, terrible, college dropout poetry that attempts to be deep while extolling the need to wake up in the face of media zombification as perpetuated by governments and corporations. As concepts go, it’s fair enough, but DefDFires simply don’t have the vocabulary or the wisdom to render it half as hard-hitting or convincing as they aspire to, and in doing so, narrow the concept to a point at which it’s down to just the one dimension.
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It’s also massively overlong, assembling a total of twenty tracks spanning in excess of an hour, despite the fact they’ve only just got enough ideas to stretch out over an EP.
But what do you expect from an act called DefDFires? It’s possibly the worst play on words I’ve ever heard. I mean, it’s barely a play on words, because it simply doesn’t work. Half-baked? It’s not even made it within thirty feet of the oven. The component parts simply don’t add up, and squeezing in the word ‘def’ doesn’t make them cred in any parlance.
They may be ‘the collective manifestation of a milk-depraved generation of misfits brought together through love and appreciation of music, and general sense of confusion towards the dysfunctional world around them’, but even if ‘Operation: Zombie Nation’ was a great album, the name would be an obstacle. As it is, they deliver exactly what the name suggests. An embarrassment.
DefDFires Online
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