A Magnificent Day For An Exorcism

Right when nu-metal apologia really started picking up steam, out came Pharoahe Monch to make mincemeat of the zeitgeist and show aging-millennial KoRn nostalgics just what “rap-metal” could be when you pulled both genres back to their golden era. In this case that means ’94 Organized Konfusion and ’71 Black Sabbath respectively, and this side project’s Paranoid Stress mutations put the lie to the potential for generation-gap weirdness and lets one of the greatest-slash-most inexplicably underrated MCs alive turn his Eminem-inventing (and outdoing) flow into the stuff of hesher nightmares. Guitarist Marcus Machado and drummer Daru Jones comprise the live-band two-thirds of a power trio setup that’s just as nervy hanging back and letting the blood boil (“Triskaidekaphobia”; “Oxygen”) as they are smacking the shit out of you with hands of doom (“The Exorcist”; “666 (Three Six Word Stories)”). And Monch’s nearly fifty-something voice sounds more alive and energized and elaborate than he’s been since Internal Affairs, still refusing to be jaded as he channels “Stray Bullet”-level storytelling into mass-shooter deconstructions (“The Magician”) and postmortems for a Trump Era that refuses to die (“Cult 45”).