Armand Hammer and The Alchemist get tasteful and surreal on Mercy

All, and others, contributed to the evolution of Black Expressionism. They’re the forebears of today’s rap, including the poetic, interrogative, and abstract-leaning work of billy woods, Elucid, and Armand Hammer (woods’ and Elucid’s collaborative moniker).

Following the politically charged Haram and raconteurial We Buy Diabetic Strips, Armand Hammer return with their latest project, Mercy. If the duo have leaned toward elliptical writing in the past, here it’s particularly pronounced. Language is used invocatively – rousing the ancient spirits, pounding on the doors of collective denial – as much as a way to convey meaning. As a result, it can be difficult to nail down sustained themes or motifs. That said, rapidly fired lines and passages do provoke deep musings and vivid flashes of feeling, each verse functioning as a kind of free-jazz foray (offered rhythmically and urgently via words).

The album also marks the duo’s reunion with The Alchemist, who produced Haram. This time around, ALC still draws from a tasteful range of sounds and genres, but seems to have developed a greater interest in the minimal. The result: soundscapes that are elegant, at times delicately constructed, even as they bolster and complement woods’ and Elucid’s incendiary verbal streams.

“Peshawar” opens with an otherworldly piano part, Elucid offering a reflective passage: “At a desk now / twice exiled / Black gentile”. woods soon adds his take: “Gleefully watch the system crash / … thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human”. The instrumentation grows more complex, the piano part exuding an ethereal quality while beats and heaving vocals serve as an anchor. Lyrically, the track is associative more than denotative; a listener, however, picks up on: allusions to the plight of Blackness in the Western world, the plight of democracy in a capitalistic world, and the plight of the human in a technological/digitized world.

“Glue Traps” employs a familiar image or metaphor as a way to further a slanted commentary on economic and sociological inequities: “It’s hard to get out of bed when there’s glue traps behind the stove / Bulldozers in the olive groves / … Every story tells a story that’s already been told”. In other words, it’s nearly impossible to get ahead (unless you started there), nature is being systemically dismantled, and deadening repetition is the defining factor in most people’s lives.

“Scandinavia” features piano accents, a draggy/druggy beat, and swirly atmospherics. woods and Elucid craft what feel like an apocalyptic travelogue and myth-of-origin story, as they touch on childhood memories, riff on segregation, and laud their own resilience. Pink Siifu offers a drawly and moving guest-spot on “Crisis Phone”. Strings rise and crest, beats are jazzy, brushy, spry. Atmospherics are a blend of the sci-fi and horror lite.

“I miss you like the regime toppled”, woods offers on “Moonbow”, issuing a mixed message that successfully throws shade (in any number of directions) while also alluding to the imperialistic affinities that lurk in the West’s DNA. “u know my body”, meanwhile, brings to mind Buddhist death contemplations, as the duo describe the body in mostly repellant terms (“bodies in the water like apples bobbing”, “bodies like porn”, “a dollhouse of horrors”, “bodies on bodies on bodies”). Rather than glorifying sensuality and sexuality, the piece highlights how the body dies and flesh rots. The tableaux also recall genocidal scenes: bodies buried in pits, fields covered with corpses. The sonics are mostly ambient, what sound like singing bells run through a chorus effect, beats that shove the track along.

“California Games” is more ebullient, as ALC crosses classical motifs and rangy beats. Earl the Sweatshirt’s slurry and laidback guest-spot offers a fertile contrast to woods’ and Elucid’s more adrenalized deliveries. “Super Nintendo” is built around a fusillade of visions, confessions, and declarations. A lo-fi Cassio keyboard part is at once whimsical and creepy.

Mercy shows woods and Elucid delving more deeply into surrealism, their lyrical flows, brimming with uninhibited leaps, often bordering on stream-of-consciousness. The Alchemist’s approach is lighter, his treatments perhaps more precisely wielded than on Haram. With Mercy, Armand Hammer continue to radicalize and aestheticize rap, pushing language beyond the conventional – all while reflecting the savage world we live in.