Written by Jason Marecki
In this series of reviews, Jaden Reynolds and I are covering each major Armand Hammer release in preparation for their new album, Mercy, out November 7th.
Shrines is the duo’s 5th album and a far cry from Armand Hammer’s previous project, Paraffin. Released in 2020, the project sees billy woods and ELUCID fleshing out the Armand Hammer sound more and more. If Paraffin was focused on defining the harshest ends of the spectrum, Shrines focuses on stepping back and defining the softer ends of their sound.
I think we’ve said this in every review Jaden and I have written for this series, but the trademark Armand Hammer lyricism is here in droves. Shrines is a through and through criticism of political leaders. The corrupt systems we have found ourselves firmly situated in are poisoning the roots of society. Our leaders extract every drop of value from the most vulnerable and funnel it straight to the least.
The pair come out swinging with the first track off the album, “Bitter Cassava”. woods begins the track with a reference to RZA, founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan and often criticized for choices he made with/for the group. woods and ELUCID have made a career off trying to wake people up to the injustice and decay around them and nobody listens: “Like, this what I get for helping?” woods continues, criticizing performative leftists, “they go left but can’t finish”, the way every facet of society has been rigged for the one percent to win, “Before the game start you rig it”, and how everyone has become a tool for the surveillance state to watch over its prisoners “Sheetrock thin, neighbors in my business”. There is no peace in a decaying society. There’s more I could say about this verse, and how it encapsulates the essence of the album, but I do want to talk about ELUCID’s verse for a bit.
ELUCID has always been the more esoteric of the two. The first two bars of the verse are “Teaching my kid to throw the peace sign / Thumb god double dare green slime”. However, as silly as it might sound, ELUCID delivers each and every one of these with precision and dead seriousness. It’s something you don’t see often in rappers, that confidence and willingness to ostracize the listener. Another couplet that really sticks out from this verse is “Please don’t call me king, no / We can’t have all the things.” It’s poignant with the latest “No Kings” protests planning to sweep the nation October 18th. King/queen are often used by black people to refer to one another, honoring shared African heritage and ancestors. ELUCID flips the term on its head. How could a black person in America ever be considered a king? Every facet of American society has been rigged for black people to fail and become subjugated once again. There’s no kingliness in that.
I could go on about “Bitter Cassava”, but it’s just a glimpse into the absolutely legendary lyricism Armand Hammer exhibits in each and every track on the album. “Pommelhorse” compares the endless march of progress to the 1986 Challenger disaster, “Dead Cars” likens society to, you guessed it, dead cars lining a street filled with garbage and plastic, “The light was beautiful streaming through the broken entrance”, and on and on. There’s no one better in the game right now, and anyone that knows anything will agree.
One place Shrines falters is in the production. This definitely is a personal bias, but Shrines is so much more stripped back than Paraffin. Previous Armand Hammer work was willing to scare and frighten the listener through a deadly combination of esoteric, apocalyptic lyrics and equally nerve-wracking production. Shrines steps back. It’s soft at times, sampling Brian Eno and Robert Fripp and pulling on that more ambient, standard production. Armand Hammer are at their best, in my opinion, when they are their least accessible. Shrines, all around, but especially in its production, feels like an experiment on how soft they can be. They never dip to the mediocrity of their early releases like Race Music or Furtive Movements, but it rarely reaches the highs of Paraffin.
As always, I love to see what was coming out in hip-hop around the time of release and compare Shrines to it. The year was absolutely stacked for abstract, experimental, and conscious hip-hop, Visions of Bodies Being Burned by clipping., RTJ4 by Run the Jewels, Little Dominique’s Nosebleed by The Koreatown Oddity, 333 by Bladee, Descendants of Cain by KA, Pray for Paris by Westside Gunn, Whole Lotta Red by Playboi Carti, Me by Izaya Tiji, among a host of others. Shrines certainly stands out among the crowd, but not as much as I’d like.
Shrines is definitely their most dense lyrical project to date, and it offers hours upon hours of artistry to dig through for the discerning listener. The Armand Hammer sound is finally being rounded out, and will be put to amazing use with their next 2 releases. Do yourself a favor and please please please listen to Shrines, preferably on your way to or at a No Kings Protest October 18th.
8/10.
Favorite tracks: Bitter Cassava, Dead Cars, Pommelhorse, Leopards, Ramesses II
Check back next week for a Jason Marecki double-header when I review Haram by Armand Hammer!
You can find the previous entry in this series, Jaden Reynolds’ review of Paraffin here.