Album Review: Vents - Marked For Death

This here is the Australian MC's second release, the follow up to his 2008 record 'Hard To Kill', and is fully produced by Trials. Straight off the bat, anyone who isn't a fan of political content in their music need not bother with this record, it has a massive focus on political and social awareness. Luckily for myself Vents' anti-capitalist, atheist, pro-drug use, anti-war, anti-ignorance world views are almost identical to mine. Such issues dominate the content in amongst a reasonable amount of battle rap (the two seem to go hand in hand nowadays).

Cinematic massacres, purges, murders, animal urges
Militarism returns, made a massive resurgence
Unkind is a word just scratching the surface
Got me thinkin that humanity, it has to be worthless

As an MC Vents has a deep voice, aggressive delivery and dominating presence as well as an enjoyable flow...unfortunately none of these ever change up. I find with an MC that lacks versatility that to be enjoyable over a full-length release the productions needs to be impressive, but more importantly varied. Trials work on the boards here isn't particuarly varied but it's not a monotone soundscape either. As for the quality, for the most part it's reasonable enough, with a few real standouts (No Rest For The Wicked is amongst my favourite beats so far this year) and a few disappointments. That said there's no filler on the album, Vents is impressive on every single track and the guest verses all deliver, it's just the monotony that tends to drag the album down and kill a lot of the replay value.

Highlights: No Rest For The Wicked, Falling, The Punisher, Rollin' Balls

Lowlights: None 

Rating: 7.4/10

Further Listening: Check out his debut album, Hard To Kill, an album with a similar tone, similar content and of a similar quality.