Body Count ‘Carnivore’ Review: Ice-T’s rap-metal project remain at the top of their game.
Body Count made major waves on their 90’s debut album, especially its track Cop Killer, which drew fire from everyone from president George H.W. Bush to Charlton Heston. Hip hop icon Ice-T effortlessly infused his socially conscious lyrics to thrash guitar riffs, making for one of the most original rap/rock hybrids to date.
Maybe the rapper’s knack for dissecting troubled times with expert rhymes explains the band’s resurgence in the past few years, in particular on 2017’s Bloodlust, which took aim at the Trump era with brutally beautiful results.
Body Count are back with Carnivore, another musical punch in the face that suffers no fools and shows that the fusion of hip hop and metal can still be vibrant and focused under the right hands.
Things kick off with the title track, a low-key rager full of horror film atmospherics and lyrics rife with urban decay (City streets are my domain/Gut the victims, bleed the veins
Nightly news gives my report/Sometimes I just kill for sport), undercut with an inhuman growl low in the mix that fits the feral tone perfectly.
Next the album veers into a Lemmy tribute with an unexpected cover of Motorhead’s Ace of Spades. Ice T’s attack dog bark vocals works surprisingly well, helping to make the track the bands’ own while also honoring its late creator.
Speaking of covers, Carnivore also features two metal updates of the classic Ice T hip-hop classic Colors and 6 In The Morning. Both translate well, with machine gun riffing replacing record scratches, adding even more grit and texture to the source material.
Point The Finger takes on the familiar Ice-T topic of police brutality, augmented by backing vocals from Power Trip’s Riley Gale, while Bum Rush is a classic banger featuring pitch shifted guitars and lyrics railing against the deeply fractured times in which we live:
We figured out how it’s all set up
The object, to keep us all split up
Keep us fighting amongst ourselves
While you accumulate all the wealth
Bum Rush also features a sweet guitar solo from longtime member Ernie C, who remains a crucial component of the band’s sound. He unleashes melodic, frenetic guitar work throughout the album, most memorably on the intro to the Jamey Jasta featured Another Level and the Slayer-esque intro on The Hate Is Real.
After the epic shit talking track No Remorse, the album switches gears with When I’m Gone, perhaps the most jarring song on the album, if not the band’s entire body of work. A somber tribute to slain rapper Nipsey Russell, it features backing vocals from Evanescence’s Amy Lee.
It’s the closest the band has ever come to crafting a ballad, and an unusual one at that, which deserves credit for expanding their formula, even if its not one of the album’s stronger tracks.
All in all, Carnivore is another win for Body Count, and further proof they’re as strong now as in their heyday, with topical lyrics and incendiary riffs that ignite like musical Molotov cocktails, offering harsh truths and vicious grooves to help make sense of the increasingly surreal and savage times in which we live.
