Emerging from a politicised music scene in England’s capital city, Senser dipped into the genre-blending alternative punk/metal pool of the early 90s. Although they don’t specifically enjoy being referred to as rapcore, they perhaps surely paved the way for other UK acts such as One Minute Silence and even stretched out to third-wave skacore bands such as Capdown andSonic Boom Six. After the relative success of 1994’sStacked Up the band somehow fizzled out. Under the gaze of New Labour they meandered through the latter part of the decade and early 2000s at a time where rap rock/metal was at its corporate zenith and symbolised by that red baseball cap.
Everyone liked Limp Bizkit at some point (yes, you did), but instead of banging on about fast cars, your “homies” around the world, or getting caught up in “millennium shit”, Senser’s early music combined the aggressive political stance of Public Enemy with guitars from metal and psychedelia. They pointed their fingers at the failures of the Conservative government, and covered various issues such as gun crime and racism alongside other bands as diverse as Asian Dub Foundation. This is a reason why the band decided to record Public Enemy‘s “Don’t Believe The Hype” with its beat-boxed drums, and the “Angel of Death”-sampled “Channel Zero” for this EP. Musically this sounds similar to their early output, punk-tinged but with heavily-saturated guitars – especially on theEric B and Rakim cover “Follow The Leader”. The dark guitar sound and deep bass is punctuated by subtle strings or synths, and coupled with the turntable scratching and explosive chorus, it brings back memories of early (hed) Planet Earth. The band maintain that “this is really the music most of us grew up with, to us early hip-hop represents a parallel with folk music, or the jazz standards – a lexicon of classics”.
Biting Rhymes serves as an aperitif to Senser’s 5th full-length, which is destined for release at some point in the future. 2009′s How to do Battle didn’t totally rekindle interest in this genre (grabbing an uninspired 1/5 from Onemetal in the process), so it would be an upward struggle to create the same kind of following as they had just over fifteen years ago. Just don’t call it a comeback…
[Originally published on Onemetal]
