Album Review: [Sic] by Bang On!

The beats: dubstep-in-the-old-days, mixed with big drums on the ‘Fix Up, Look Sharp’-alike ‘Got IT’, old-school metal riffs on ‘Your Gay’ and d’n’b on ‘MUNNYS’ and ‘Punk-Donk’. The good raps: witty, real-life experiences and anger about misuse of the word ‘gay’, la-de-das ordering extra-large Big Mac meals, footballer Mikel Arteta, getting stoned, working-class discontentment (“Capitalism is a catalyst for cataclysmic class divisions”). The bad raps: that “pissflaps” verse? Nah… The delivery: rapid, and Liverpudlian MC Elliott Egerton’s accent is striking, at no point dumbed down in the way that, say, Mike Skinner’s Brummieness was when The Streets emerged.

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Liverpudlian rapper Elliott Egerton, stage name Bang On!, describes his take on rap as "punk-donk-dub-hip-hop. " It's hard to say whether or not that's an accurate description, but a listen to his debut album makes a few things clear. First of all, he's no slave to the beat or even to comprehensibility: "Teeth," the album's opening track, is both indecipherable (especially near the end, when multiple tracks of his voice are layered on top of each other) and beatless, accompanied only by sustained notes played on a distorted electric guitar.

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