Sonically and aesthetically, this is the best industrial hiphop album ever made -- all warm distortion, piercing tin, menace like rising steam and bass so deep and dead it'll go down like you just swallowed the wrong pill.

No disrespect, but the other guy's comment about "pretentiousness" was totally misleading (despite his decent word-pictures of the sound): these MCs know exactly what they're saying. The definition of pretension is affecting knowledge one doesn't actually possess, and the raps/rants heard here spew measured prosody and restless eclecticism from a place that is as sincere and self-assured as it is eccentric. Add to that an overlay of anger and you've got a night-of-the-living-don't-fuck-with-me soundtrack: Perfect for speeding through wrecked cities, picking fights in your head and picturing the end.

I generally don't have a taste for thesaurus-laden "intelligent" (read: pretentious) MCs like El-P and the guys form Anti-Pop Consortium. Even Dälek, despite his astonishing musical presence, sometimes gets on my nerves. But Techno Animal keeps all gears roaring on this album, keeping the virus synth torches burning through foggy urban battlefield atmospheres, and some of the harshest metallic breakbeats I've ever heard. In the end it doesn't really matter what silly graduate theses the mcs are cramming into the songs, as their sheer delivery contributes to the songs abstract rhythmic melodies that up their aggression to maximum. It's too bad this was TA's last full-length, it looked like they were heading towards some amazing territory.