Released on Definitive Jux Records.

3.5/5 Stars

This album is good. Really good. It’s just not ripping-eyeballs-out-of-sockets good. And that, oddly enough, is a bad thing.

Cage is violent on the mic, and he does violence well. So his choice, on his newest album “Hell’s Winter,” to steer clear of his mental gold mine of lyrical ultraviolence is confusing. He sounds uncomfortable wading into unfamiliar waters. “Hell’s Winter”, the follow-up to 2002’s titular paradox “Movies for the Blind,” is a move away from the gleeful aggression that has characterized his earlier work. Instead he steps into the well-worn treads of sensitive indie-rap, dropping his most polished and listenable album to date.

The production, handled by Def Jux guru El-P, alongside other behemoths like DJ Shadow, Blockhead (Aesop Rock’s producer), as well as Cage’s long-time collaborator Camu Tao, snaps with aggressive buzzing thuds and lush melodic loops. El-P, who has a hand in more than half of the songs, opens with one of those rare productions where grinding guitar and a low end courtesy of the bassist from Yo La Tengo, actually work under the voice of an MC.

Camu Tao—who takes a brief turn behind the mic—brings the best production on the album, an accomplishment considering the big-name peers on board. The strongest tracks come at the end of the album, beginning with Camu’s superstar showcase “Left It To Us,” where El-P and Aesop Rock make you remember how awesome hip-hop collaborations can be. This is especially true in comparison to “Shoot Frank,” a pallid mournful-eyed pop-metal whiner with a disappointing RJD2 beat that deserves mention only because it is almost impossible to listen to.

Though the tracks are glossy, and expertly tweaked, Cage sometimes sounds uncomfortable over their finished perfection. On “Too Heavy For Cherubs,” while recalling an abusive childhood, he sounds like he’s restraining himself from exploding out of the lazy Blockhead beat; you can almost hear him chomping on the bit shoved in his mouth. “Movies for the Blind” had a low-fi feel that his rabid delivery finds easier to inhabit.

Maybe he’s growing up, or maybe the superstar producers weren’t so keen about his more visceral fare; either way Cage has definitely changed. Though the album kicks off with a hard-hitting ode to New York City, Cage quickly turns reflective, and from there, skitters off into the masturbatory pleasure of self-analysis and the accompanying big complicated words.

This isn’t to say that he’s not good at it (he is), but his unpredictable intensity is missing. Cage has gone from sampling Wu-Tang on his last album to quoting the Smashing Pumpkins: “Despite all my rage/ I’m a rat in a cage/The skies communicate to love, injecting bleach in my eyes”

It’s good, but you can get the same from a host of others. Sometimes, you don’t need achingly deep lyrics and intricate internal rhyme schemes; you don’t want to hear how the rage makes him feel, but what he’s going to do with it.

You’re hoping that he’ll go totally batshit, because most people can’t actually punch in faces left and right. Lyrical gymnastics and hot beats are here in abundance, but sometimes the street-slick Def Jux machine stifles too much of the high-pitched rapper who used to trigger nightmares.