The 2019 installment in the clipping. discography, There Existed An Addiction To Blood, sees the musicians explore a different layer of the hip hop world: the horrorcore. The main elements of this genre are present, gruesome horror tales, vivid expressions of urban violence, vampires, and serial killers. But, at the same time, the L.A. trio managed to reinvent the hardcore style. They blend it sonically with a heavy industrial clanking production that explodes in outbursts of noise, and thematically with the social and racial themes (drugs, trap house, gangs, racism and violence against black people) of the uncomfortable side of the 2010s that, directly or allegorically, are addressed by the lyrics.

The cinematic influences

Daveed Diggs delivers aggressive and technical bars, also in extra beat. They help sustain the infectious beats, which put the listener in a mood of uneasiness and anxiety, just like John Carpenter‘s movies (The Thing, Halloween) whose soundtrack influenced the album. The listener hears Carpenter’s presence in tracks like Nothing is Safe. It starts with creepy high piano notes in the beginning and evolves into an (anti)cathartic chorus. It evokes a feeling of uncertainty and constant danger.

In La Mala Ordina (such as Fernando Di Leo’s 1972 crime movie, The Italian Connection) or Club Down, the trio expresses their reinterpretation of horrorcore. An ethereal, swift flow suspended on a drone enriched by sounds of screams and clangor of metallic broken things. They seem torn apart by a shadowy presence. This particular style of production keeps the tension high as if the listener was watching a well-made thriller movie.

The whole project seems to have a cinematic nature. It integrates different interludes taken from horror movies. Moreover, it borrows the title from Bill Gunn’s 1973 vampire horror film, Ganja and Hess. These interludes, though, weigh down the tracklist and make the work feel a little bloated at times.

Addicted to human nature and blood

The piece Blood of the Fang offers a key to understanding the project. It retraces the emancipation of African Americans like Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and Bobby Hutton. A dark wonder about how the human race has always been addicted to blood and how nothing can be seriously taken before it has bled.

You can find There Existed An Addiction To Blood on Spotify.