- Die Antwoord have certainly kept themselves in the (lurid, yellow) spotlight since their international debut $o$ banged and sleazed its way into everybody's ears. Most recently their attention grabbing has been all to do with their split with Interscope / Universal - apparently the label reckoned Ten$ion was just too filthy... I mean, what? A clean version of a Die Antwoord single sounds like ... nothing it all! Urgh, that was always going to be a bad fit. Well, our favourite Antwoords weren't going to be stifled by any record label suits, so here's the record in all its self-released glory. Complete with 'Uncle Jimmy', a cryptic, not particularly funny and quite creepy skit about their label rep. Oh you win this one, Die Antwoord, I guess? It may be, however, that their former label have had their revenge too.
Back when $o$ first cussed up a storm I predicted that Die Antwoord, with their brand of rave anthem hip hop and bratty as hell rap sauce was going to find it - like for every other outfit that's ever tried something like this (Hadouken! I'm looking at you) - very hard to pull off a second time round. It's quite an achievement to make music that revels in being brashly stoopid and cheesy and win plaudits from every critic in town. How do you do that twice? Do you do the same thing and get labelled repetitive? Do you try and add a bit of depth and social commentary and get labelled contrived? Do you make it even more offensive and risk turning everyone off? Actually, there's a small and nasty bit of my brain that would've liked to have seen that. Anyway, the point is, more than for most, Die Antwoord's second record was going to be tough. How much tougher must it have been to stay true to ... whatever formula they decided to go with, when they had a record company handing them more money than they'd ever seen and saying "could you make it sound like Flo Rida except without swears?"
Enough with feeling sorry for them though, time to judge the record on its merits. One of the first things you'll notice is that all that money bought Die Antwoord some time in a very expensive studio. The big rave beats sound even bigger than ever before, just check out bass-pumping single I Fink U Freeky. They sure aren't any smarter though, and they've thrown in big dubstep bass drops just to make sure. Both Ninja and Yolandi are still rapping like champions, although those of you who were irritated by Yolandi's chipmunk sounding voice are still going to be, you guessed it, really irritated. Even if the low is good, the subject matter floating along in it, well it's kinda like sewage. That's not really different from the first record - all sex with the drugs - but Ten$ion, ironically, lacks exactly that. We've heard this before and where it made your extremities tingle the first time round, my buzz is not on this time. On the dancefloor I think this could still be a goer, but those little guilty grins I got listening on my iPod on the bus, they're in short supply now. It would be easy to have a backlash against Die Antwoord for being what they always have been and that's not really fair. It's kind of a shame that there has been such controversy surrounding the release of Ten$ion, it's focused everyone's attention on a record that could've done with a bit of anonymity - would that be cheating? - giving Die Antwoord a bit of time and space to consider where they're going to go in the future. I have a soft spot for them and will be quite interested to hear what they do next.

Chris Cobcroft.