A group I had always somewhat treated unfairly, $ucideboy$, makes great music with dark themes that in my opinion tended to draw them a fanbase of people who think they're a little bit smarter than they are. However, that doesn't go for everyone that listens to them, and it doesn't mean they don't have music worth listening to.
This is actually my first $B album, which I had originally actually checked out due to the feature from BONES on "Now and at the Hour of Our Death." However, the entire album pleasantly surprised me and I think I'll be continuing to listen to more of their music after this. The music has a dark, grimy, and very bass heavy sound which is done extremely well and doesn't tend to come off looking particularly sloppy or immature, as a lot of music in a similar style can tend to sound. The album overall stays very consistently good, while reaching a few big high points that I really did love and have found their way into my rotation.
One unique thing I've been really enjoying about them is Scrim's voice, which manages to have an aggressive growl to it while still retaining a good flow and not slipping into the staccato angry flow that some artists such as Eminem have been falling into recently. Ruby da Cherry has a much cleaner voice, which creates a really good contrast to Scrim, though I found myself somewhat less impressed by his flows overall.
The first song, Count Your Blessings, lays down a good overall mood for the album. It's somewhat slow in tempo, has a very low pitched and hazy instrumental, and Scrim and Ruby continue their style of dark and edgy lyrics despite having improved their life, which does make me chuckle a little bit but I do like that they still continue to make good music in this style while also being much happier and healthier people.
$B, much like many alternative groups and styles, like to use Christian imagery in their music. Here, Oh, What a Wretched Man I Am! is named for a bible verse, and has lots of lyrics referencing God and demons, all over a very subdued and hazy instrumental that's easy to get lost in. This one also has some of the more vulnerable lyrics, with Ruby rapping about how he's trying to be a good person despite his struggles with mental health and Scrim rapping about his addiction and how it nearly drove him to taking his own life. This is one of the harder cutting tracks on the album, and was a big standout on my first listen.
Full of Grace (I Refuse to Tend My Own Grave) is another more upbeat and accessible track, but honestly this one felt mostly forgettable to me and without going back to it while writing this I couldn't really remember much about it. I didn't dislike it, but there wasn't really much to be said about it or to remember. Flows were decent, instrumental was decent, lyrics were decent.
Another somewhat forgettable album cut, Chain Breaker, manages to do more that draws me in to return to it. The lyrics are rapped very high pitched with autotune in a way more reminiscent of late 2010s trap like Uzi, but the instrumental is still a very grimy dark southern beat. The flow switches create some really memorable moments, especially on Ruby's verse, where he does has moments where he's almost singing that creates something of a hook on the song, and the transition between both verses brought a lot of momentum back to the track before it got stale.
And here we get to my favorite song by no small margin, and the one that got me to listen to the album in the first place, Now and at the Hour of Our Death. The instrumental comes out swinging with dark synth organs and a chant of Northside, and instantly Scrim delivers my favorite of his verses on the album. Lots of fun flow switches, a very angry delivery that never sounds inauthentic, some extremely well produced moments manipulating his voice and the instrumental to create some really noticeable hits during it, and some ignorant but admittedly extremely fun lyrics to chant like "Swervin' matte black Rovers, fuck bein' sober" and ending his verse, as all of them, with a scream of "tear it down." Ruby's verse picks up exactly where Scrim's leaves off, with a very consistent flow that lets you get lost in the instrumental, leading right into the first BONES feature $B have had in years since they cleaned up their beef. BONES does not disappoint, with tons of flow switches and vocal inflections in a short verse and tons of hard hitting lines, and the song ending off with a continued chant of tear it down from Scrim and BONES overlayed over another short verse from Ruby for a perfect conclusion to an absolutely phenomenal song.
Maybe my hottest take, Self-Inflicted is one of the weaker songs. It's a lot of fun on a first listen, with a fast instrumental and fast flows with great vocal delivery, but I don't really think they did anything particularly unique on it. It feels like the appeal of it is just how fast they rap, but I think $B are in their element when they're switching their vocals up over slower and harder hitting instrumentals, leaving this a fairly weak song that's great to listen to once but doesn't provide much on a relisten.
Grey+Grey+Grey is a really fun song, interlaced with tons of samples and great rhyme schemes from both artists, on top of one of the most aggressive and in your face beats on the album. The production on this song creates a lot of momentum and prevents there from ever being a dull moment, either allowing the rappers to get into their bag and deliver excellent flows or allowing them to create big iconic moments. This is another one of the ones that's made its way into my rotation, and it has my favorite verse from Ruby with tons of crazy vocal inflections switching from screaming to rapping to growling while sounding natural the entire time.
Carried Away brings us the second and last feature of the album, from Night Lovell, who I hadn't heard of before listening to this album. The entire song has a very dreamy instrumental that I was getting very lost in, and it's also somewhat unique in actually having a hook. This song has the most traditional song structure on the album, but I don't think it's done in a way that sacrifices what $uicideboy$ are good at, and similar to Napoleon it creates a song that I'd be a little more easily able to get away with playing in front of my friends. Ruby's verse is aggressive, Scrim's is ethereal, and Night Lovell brings a more melodic style that complements the instrumental and the other two verses extremely well. I hadn't mentioned it until right now, but the sequencing of the album is done extremely well to bring momentum throughout the entire tracklist, and this serves as a great way to wind down from the aggression on the entire rest of the project.
To wrap the album up, I was honestly a touch disappointed by Monochromatic. It just doesn't really serve its purpose well, and while it shows $B trying to create something that's not as in their style, I don't think they did a good job of it. I liked the lyrics a lot, they have great themes of aloneness and they're delivered well overall, though I think the production noticeably drags the song down and some of the more drawn out flows especially on Ruby's verse are a little bit grating to my ears and not in the good way that I liked throughout the rest of the album when they were rapping and not so much singing.
Overall this album was a good introduction to $uicideboy$ and I might continue to check out the rest of their music. It was all very accessible and while a lot of the tracklist was mostly just decent to good, the few major standouts like Now and at the Hour of Our Death, Napoleon, and Carried Away make the album very worth returning to as a whole. I'm glad that they continue to make music with a lot of anger and emotion in it despite having really improved their own lives, and I'm particularly glad that we got a couple of great features on the album as I grew to miss those as I checked out some of their other recent albums.
I give it a 7/10. Consistently decent, with a few major highlights, and the lows weren't even particularly low.