Gross Prophet - "Gross Prophet EP"

Artist: Gross Prophet
Album: Gross Prophet EP
Year: 2008
Label: Self-Released
Genre: Breakcore!!!!
Website: http://myspace.com/grossprophet

Packaging: 6/10
Hand-printed labels, however the quality is quite high. The cover artwork is totally awesome!!! The inside of the booklet is blank though :(

Composition: 7.5/10
Wheeeee. Gross Prophet makes fun, spastic, whacked out breakcore in the vein of all your breakcore favs like Venetian Snares and I guess the rest of them (I don‘t know that many who make this style actually). Although Gross Prophet has been around for a quite a while (at least a few years anyway), this is his first official release (I think). The EP is 7 tracks, but it would be impossible to go over them individually because they are far too complex. The EP kicks off with an awesome and very fitting sample about milk. There is tons and tons of shit to be heard on each track and most of it sounds really cool and mixes well with the tons of other elements flying around like molecules stimulated by vast a heat source. It’s got a lot of super synthetic sounds, many almost 8bit sounding in their lack of bits. Most of the stuff sounds random for the sake of being insane and random, but I think that’s part of the fun of this style. Although there is tons of random shit going on, it seems as though a fairly good deal of thought and meticulous planning went into each part of any given track. The tracks are all high energy and none of them will give you even a second to collect your thoughts in the middle. Really good for people with ADD. There are tons of tempo and time signature changes which is fucking awesome. And of course no modern breakcore release would be complete without sampled and mangled distorted guitar, which this has plenty of on 'Brainkrieg'. He does the metal-infused breakcore thing very well, and mutates the guitar in pretty interesting ways, however I’m glad he limited it to one track because that’s my least favorite kind of breakcore. The EP is very heavy on rhythmic elements, which are utilized very well, however I would have liked to hear a bit more melodic stuff used (although he does have awesome chopped up samples), and perhaps some slower tempo sections for a change of pace.

Production: 8/10
Everything on this EP was done by Gross Prophet, including the artwork, the mixing and the mastering. The album sounds pretty damn good for having no outside hands touch it. The mixing is very clean and each of the 1000000000 sounds compliment one another without fighting for space in the mix. Even though there is tons of shit constantly going on, it’s pretty easy to comprehend it all due to the smooth mixing. However the EP is missing some of the ‘bigness’ that an outside mastering studio could give it, especially on the low end. But still, compared to some of the shit that V Snares has put out, this sounds damn good.

Artistic Merit: 7.5/10
Not totally new for breakcore, but this is a solid and fairly unique take on the genre (it’s impressive that he seems to have already found his personal style, as this is his first official release) and I can’t think of any other producers who he could have ripped off.

Flow: 8/10
For a super spastic, glitched-out conflagration this flows as well as I could ever hope for. He has the good sense to make cool intros that build and then let loose and go crazy.

Overall: 7.5/10
A very strong debut for Gross Prophet. Any fan of breakcore or weird electronic music should totally dig this. I am very much looking forward to a full length release, although I hope that he ventures a bit into other territory (slower tracks, more melodic tracks etc).

-dan barrett
11-11-08