The seventh album from Ice-T’s heavy metal band sounds like a TED Talk set to a bracing thrashcore/groove metal soundtrack.
It takes a special balance to straddle the line between piousness and self-parody, but Tracy Marrow, aka Ice-T, has long pulled it off with gusto. Since the beginning of his 1987 hip-hop debut Rhyme Pays, Marrow has relished his self-appointed role as something like Crenshaw, Los Angeles’ unofficial ambassador to the world. As Marrow once explained to Arsenio Hall in 1989, his m.o. has been to intentionally paint exaggerated scenarios in order to show the world what street hustling life is like while also discouraging black youth from pursuing a life of crime. In 1990, Marrow carried the same approach over into metal group Body Count, which he founded with southpaw guitarist Ernie Cunnigan aka Ernie C.
In an interlude on Body Count’s seventh album, Bloodlust, Marrow explains that he started the band to provide the metal-loving Cunnigan with a musical vehicle while also expressing his own love for three key influences: Black Sabbath, Suicidal Tendencies, andSlayer. If you don't mind Marrow’s didactic style, the impromptu Q&A comes off with some charm, as if Marrow were standing at a lectern expounding on the band’s history. (Hell, if Steve Albini can take questions halfway through Shellac’s shows, why shouldn’t Marrow do the same on his own records?) In fact, much of this album plays like the 2015 TED Talk Marrow gave at the Sing Sing maximum-security prison, only set to a bracing thrashcore/groove metal soundtrack.
On his own, Ice-T has maintained household-name status for his 17-year role as Detective Tutuola on the “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” TV series. But the last time Body Count caused any real ripples in the zeitgeist came in the summers of ’91 and ’92, first as a surprise addition to Ice-T’s rap set on the inaugural Lollapalooza tour, and then as the source of a heated controversy over their song “Cop Killer.” Marrow ultimately agreed to pull “Cop Killer” from later pressings of the band’s 1992 debut. Since then, the band has basically repeated itself, almost becoming a heritage act before its time. These days, Body Count can operate in a comfortable space satisfying the public’s niche appetites for vintage metal and hardcore.
But now, owing to the recent occurrences of police brutality captured on video, Body Count stand poised to hit a nerve once again. Marrow attempts to do so most blatantly on “No Lives Matter.” No surprise, he explains the song’s motives in a monologue before it even begins. It’s not, as the ironic title might suggest, a renunciation of the Black Lives Matter movement, but a reminder that although racism is very much alive, power elites view all poor people with the same inhumane disregard. Similarly, Marrow waxes professorial at the beginning of the title track, where he says: “Since the beginning of time, humans have killed each other because they disagreed... The ability to kill is as innate as our ability to love.”
Needless to say, Marrow likes to spell things out. On Bloodlust, he sounds like he’s narrating a profanity-laced “Sesame Street” segment: Imagine an Ice-T muppet popping out of garbage cans shouting, “They’re shootin’ at cops/They’re pushing the line/Racism is high/The country’s divided, you know the fuck why.../The public is dumb.../Our leaders are evil!” Bloodlust is like that; it doesn’t take long to feel like you’re being patronized. That said, Marrow—who doesn’t rhyme on Body Count albums—is simply following in the footsteps of his most pointedly direct hardcore influences. For proof, just look at the Exploited medley he recorded with Slayer in 1993. But his style hasn’t changed one iota since then. Neither, really, has the rest of the band’s. They keep the music raw enough that it sounds almost-but-not-quite amateurish—again, following in the hardcore/early-thrash tradition—while Marrow’s willingness to indulge in comic absurdity with the lyrics makes Body Count’s preachiness more palatable.
Bloodlust opens with a mock emergency broadcast announcement, in which Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine announces that martial law has been declared by the Department of Homeland Security, that gatherings of two or more people are now illegal, that “all traitors will be shot,” and that “America is now engaged in civil war.” It’s hokey as hell. But what makes Ice-T still valuable in a world where we now have Killer Mike, Dälek, the Coup, and Immortal Techniqueis his unique ability to deliver a message of upheaval that also feels celebratory. Later in the opening track, there’s a giddy sense of anticipation when Ice yells “I’m feelin’ the tension/Don’t tell me you don’t.../Rich or poor, urban war/This shit just might jump off tonight” over squealing leads. At moments like that, Ice-T and Ernie C capture the energy of a party record while urging us to give serious consideration to some of the most naggingly persistent issues of our time—an accomplishment regardless of how spotty Bloodlust gets.
