Bottomless Pit (album)

Background

On October 21, 2015, the group uploaded a video to their YouTube page titled Bottomless Pit. It features footage from 2013 of the late American actress Karen Black reciting lines from a film script Zach Hill wrote months before her death. They also posted on their website and Facebook that this would be the title for their upcoming fifth official studio album.

On February 6, 2016, Death Grips released a song called "Hot Head" from their upcoming album onto their SoundCloud and YouTube accounts.

On March 18, 2016, the band published a Facebook post featuring the cover artwork for Bottomless Pit and the track listing.

On April 19, 2016, the band announced a release date of May 6 via a Facebook post alongside a download link for a document containing lyrics for each track on the album.

On April 29, 2016, the album was leaked in its entirety from the band's SoundCloud page via the website Reddit.

Critical reception

Upon release the album was met with widespread acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Bottomless Pit received an average score of 80 based on 11 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Many critics, though acknowledging the greater sound quality of the album, compared the album to the band's debut album The Money Store in terms of structure and songwriting. Pitchfork Media wrote, "On their new album 'Bottomless Pit', they stitch together one of their most cohesive grotesques ever, renewing their focus on songcraft, rather than chicanery."

In a glowing review Pretty Much Amazing described the album as "The best release from one of the most exciting artists of the 2010s", while PopMatters stated, "Bottomless Pit will clearly not be for all hip-hop or punk fans, but it is impossible to deny that this album, just like the rest of the duo’s catalog, is doing a much-needed service to both genres by experimenting with them in unimaginable ways."

Personnel