Cypress Hill
Skull & Bones
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Cypress Hill's sixth LP in nine years, Skull & Bones is a concept album of sorts -- one disc of hip-hop, and one disc of aggro rap-rock. Although it's good to hear Sen Dog back in the mix, to many old-school Cypress fans, this album is another display of the group's creative decline. There are some highlights however, such as the single "(Rap) Superstar.
Cypress Hill's fifth album is a bipolar breakdown, wherein the group willfully splits into two distinct personas: an epic, melancholic hip-hop stadium band and a thrashing, metallic rock-rap hybrid that sometimes sounds more like Fugazi than Limp Bizkit. On the hip-hop tracks, B-Real deflates his notoriously nasal vocals by one
Read More or two degrees, Sen Dog blossoms as a boomy rapper in the tradition of Chuck D, and, most important, DJ Muggs refrigerates the band's sound with a gaggle of ominous symphonic riffs. "Highlife" is emblematic of the new sound: Unlike the hard, stalking beats of the Hill's earlier tunes, it blows and sweeps in like a cold front, complete with a worried-man bass line and a bleak melody. For the rock tracks, Cypress Hill indenture members of Fear Factory and Sen Dog's band, SX-10, and spit venom, from the anthemic hardcore of "Get Out of My Head" to the blue-steel surge of "Can't Get the Best of Me." It all makes sense: After all, Cypress Hill collaborated with Sonic Youth and, er, Pearl Jam on the 1993 soundtrack for Judgment Night well before Korn and P.O.D. made heaps of wampum out of the rock-rap hybrid. But Cypress Hill show 'em how it should be done, especially with the chugging, hook-filled "(Rock) Superstar." Skull and Bones proves hip-hop is more like T2 than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Here, Cypress Hill seem capable of morphing into anyone they wanna be. (RS 840)
PAT BLASHILL
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