What hath Rage Against The Machine wrought?<\/p>\n
Thanks to their success, we’re now seeing a lot of bands who put
\na tough-sounding rap (not necessarily as political as Rage’s
\nlyrics, though) to a solid metal beat. The market isn’t
\noversaturated… yet.<\/p>\n
With a name that’s sure to get Mattel’s undies in a bunch,
\nGangsta Bitch Barbie follows in this vein. Their debut disc
\nThis Is Not A Test<\/i> is a decent enough effort, though it
\nreally takes some time before you can get into the groove. Problem
\nis, clocking in at a half hour, it really shouldn’t take that long
\nto land the first uppercut.<\/p>\n
The group – vocalist Ken Smith, guitarists Chris Fitzgerald and
\nJim Foster, bassist Jim Shippey and drummer Danny Marques – know
\nhow to lay down a groove and follow it up with a solid vocal
\nperformance. (One issue of contention: the liner notes list “Todd”
\nas a guitarist, and not Jim Foster as written in the bio and on
\ntheir Web site. Explanation, guys?)<\/p>\n
The disc starts off a little slow with “Suplex Ninja” – not a
\nbad track at all, just not the ideal first choice to kick things
\noff. The follow-up track, “Six.5,” also fails to really light a
\nfire under the listener. This isn’t saying that these tracks are
\nbad – indeed, they’re both listenable and entertaining. It’s just
\nthat if Gangsta Bitch Barbie wanted to blow me off my chair from
\nthe start, it didn’t happen.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, things get thrown into hyperdrive with “Godzilla”
\nand “KingPin”. The latter of these two remains my favorite, with a
\ndefinite vocal hook that is going to bore itself into your brain.
\n(Days after listening to this, I found myself saying for no
\napparent reason, “Swing, swing, batter batter, swing!”) (The disc
\ncloses with an unlisted remix of “KingPin” – I’ll say this much, at
\nleast they chose an excellent track as the hidden track, and I
\ndidn’t have to wait long at all for it to kick off.)<\/p>\n
Tracks like “Fluff O Nutta” and “Downsize” all do impress, but
\nThis Is Not A Test<\/i> ends just as things start to warm up for
\nthe band. This is where I think that EPs do more harm than good.
\nSure, eight songs (nine, counting the bonus track) might not really
\ncount as an EP, but when this disc clocks in at just over a
\nhalf-hour, I almost feel that I haven’t had enough time to really
\nget used to the style that Gangsta Bitch Barbie is laying down.<\/p>\n
And there’s no doubt that the band has talent, though I would
\nreally like to see them move away from a pure RATM sound and try to
\ncome up with a groove all their own. But it somehow doesn’t feel
\nright pronouncing judgment on them after a mere half-hour, no
\nmatter how many times I listen to the disc.<\/p>\n
\nThis Is Not A Test<\/i> is a good starting point for the band,
\nbut it commits the venial sins of underexposing the band and
\ngetting off to a slow start. With a little more development of
\ntheir style (which is three-quarters of the way there already) and
\na followup disc packed with tracks of the same quality caliber as
\n“KingPin”, then Gangsta Bitch Barbie could well be unstoppable. If
\nthat’s the case, then Zach De La Rocha had better keep an eye in
\nhis band’s rear view mirror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7436],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-39070","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-gangsta-bitch-barbie","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39070"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39070"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}