Seven years ago, Cannibal Ox put forth their chilling underground masterpiece, The Cold Vein, on El-P’s upstart record label Definitive Jux. With still only one true studio album to their name, Vast Aire and Vordul Mega manage to shine as gods among the hip-hop pantheon.

I must confess that I hadn’t been down with Cannibal Ox from the beginning. In 2001, I had only just begun to listen to and enjoy hip-hop music, and my two favorite albums at the time were the space opera styles of Deltron 3030’s self-titled and Jedi Mind Tricks’ Violent By Design. I had heard of Cannibal Ox and even bought their debut LP, but it would be years before my tastes would shift and I actually sat down and listened to The Cold Vein, sleeping on this New York duo harder than Rip Van Winkle. When I did eventually wake myself to the Harlem emcee’s album, it was the perfect combination of the elements I favored by the other artists I was into when it was released. El-P’s production work is some of his best, here his beats are a cold sci-fi backdrop to the raw, vicious and heady raps of Vordul Mega and Vast Aire. Imagine Wu-Tang Clan over Bjork’s Homogenic referencing superhero comics and classic hip-hop terminology while detailing inner city ills and blasting esoteric battle raps. In the first 10 second they lay it all out in the anti-chorus of “Iron Galaxy”: “My shell, mechanical found ghost/But my ghetto is, animal found toast” - a shout out to Ghost in the Shell detailing that their neighborhood is like a forgotten burnt carcass.

While those who like elevated battle raps and raw, reality-inspired story telling will have plenty to enjoy, The Cold Vein does more than simply “put a hole in your skull and extract your gelatin,” as Vast Aire promises on “Raspberry Fields”; there are moments of lucid tenderness, as in the wittily titled “The F-Word” where Vast, in his own verbally convoluted way, pours out his heart in the name of unrequited love in between Vordul’s chorus:

Vordal:
…
and it’s real ill when something going on
but nothings being said trying to figure it out
wrapped all in your head, just spit it out and I’ll
truly understand what the problem is
’cause you got me twisted tryin’ to stress birds
kickin’ that f word
fuckin around, flirtin’ and stressin’ my nerves

Vast:
check this situation, I wore my lust like cologne
she called it Obsession
the background’s black and white and we adolescents
like what the fuck we know about love?
the more I learn it’s like the Clash of the Titans
all I wanna do is avoid fightin’
a little arguing’s okay but not everyday
and if we can’t communicate what we got decays
until the smell gets more pungent
to the point where we can’t be seen in public
body parts fallin’ apart, a symbol of what things do
or better yet, a symbol of what friends do, they die
and together forever just sounds fly
that’s how it sounded to me when I heard it
and slow motion was her lips as she worded
the f word
“don’t take it personal, I like you a lot but I don’t wanna lose what we got”
but what we got now is friction
she tellin’ me intimacy and friendship she ain’t mixin’
the f word

What set Cannibal Ox aside from their contemporaries is that in The Cold Vein they bring both the street and the dictionary to their rhyme styles. While they definitely prove they’ve got the rhyme skills that kill, they’re not afraid to use words mangled beyond their original meaning and stuff their lines full of reference. On the posse track “Battle for Asgard,” Vast and Mega share the scene with future label-mate C-Rayz Walz and L.I.F.E. Long , blasting raps on hood dominion spliced with enough mentions of comic book heroism to make a nerd’s head spin. It’s this dual nature that Cannibal Ox revels in, seeing their shattered neighborhoods as the apocalyptic settings of anime movies, their wordplay as mutant superpowers, constructing an altered view to eschew the harsh realities of inner-city existence.

Sometimes though, that existence is all too real for escapist imagery. Throughout the LP you can find the two aching in parts about their crushed homes, battered peers, and evils of the world they describe with lush imagery. And while Vast may be the favored emcee by most, I find that when it comes to the sad reality, Vordal Mega shines. Alleged sufferer of clinical depression, you can feel his sorrow on “Painkillers,” a song that examines the tried and true method of numbing ones self to escape, only to sink deeper into the madness of it all:

Right here trapped in the box
Thinkin’
Rap’s all I got
Smoke too much pot
Bones with chromes twisted in knots
Cold vein with thoughts
Bubbling hot
Stoned in the bedroom
Writin’ this poem
Off the phone
Caught a head rush
Smoke clouded my dome
At the end of my ropes
Writing these notes
Hopin’ to float…
…My mind foggy
And body wet
Poppin’ shotties
Shot straight through the nostril
Cloudy with thoughts of ill type menageries
When pops used to tell me
“it wasn’t like this
with drugs and sex
up in my day”,
But poppy
Shit really changed
Yo niggaz is losing their minds
And I can’t really blame them
I’m losing my brain
In these times
And I’m angered with hangovers
Ready to ride off a cliff with a Range Rover
Like I was fuckin’ Thelma & Louise
And if I had a trigger I would squeeze
Believe
Blow my whole head off and bleed
Trying to get that same feeling
Every day pain killing

While Vast tends to receive more of the accolades as leader of Cannibal Ox, I feel that Vordal Mega is in fact the better emcee. On tracks like “Ox Out the Cage,” “Stress Rap,” and the hidden bonus track “Scream Phoenix,” the dense slang and vivid wordplay elicits the styles of Raekwon and Inspecta Deck. Still, it’s easy to see why Vast would be considered the head of the robot; in the seven years since The Cold Vein’s release, he’s come out with four albums, and another due this June. Still, despite controversy as to whether or not the group has split, Vast Aire and El-P both have stated that Cannibal Ox is still a group and that the duo will release another album. Considering the frequency of Vordal’s voice on Vast’s solo offerings, I’d say this is likely. If you haven’t heard The Cold Vein yet, consider this you seven-year wake-up alarm.

© 2008 Colin Wonnacott for Listen In. Some Rights Reserved.

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