Review Summary: Wearing two masks at the same time.
DOOM is getting old. Just a few short years away from 50, he has spent over half of his lifetime penning verses that have ranged from 'somewhat good' to 'spectacular'. Around the turn of the century, he would release album after album chocked full of clever rhyme schemes and a flow that only he could perfect. It makes at least
some sense that Inspectah Deck, member of the collective-turned-revenue-stream Wu-Tang clan, and 7L & Esoteric, a duo who has also been putting out rap albums since the early 2000's, would want to be associated with this legend. While that all looks fine on paper, the algorithm of 'two aged rappers + one aged rapper/producer duo' does not generate outstanding results.
Czarface Meets Metal Face, the fifth album from Czarface and the umpteenth album from (MF) DOOM, is a collaboration that in no way works harmoniously. DOOM's character has a strong presence that only he needs to carry. Czarface's, on the other hand, is a sort of manufactured product. It is led by three entire people, and you only get hints of their combined personality when "czar" is uttered incessantly from God-knows-who. These two auras, the two that can individually uphold an album's merit by themselves, clash
constantly. Every rapper involved makes no attempt to reference another in their verses, and they become self-centered. On
Meddle With Metal, Inspectah Deck namedrops his own group, and DOOM includes a very tired expression of his own name in his verse. On the very next song,
Badness Of Madness, the same thing happens. No one wants to talk about anyone but themselves, and it leads me to believe that Czarface only wanted this other masked man on their album for street cred.
The album itself, when it comes to production and actual lyrical ability, manages to stay at a pretty even level of solidly mediocre. There are no flashy beats, nor is there any effort to rap about something worthwhile. Every song is merely a slew of attempts to deliver one cool joke after another. Occasionally, this does work. Esoteric has one great line that closes off
Badness of Madness, and the entirety of
Don't Spoil It is a string of references to movies that either revolve around hip-hop or feature rappers trying to act. It's a clever idea that functions well as an interlude. However, there are already too many skits and interludes that litter
Czarface Meets Metal Face. It both starts and finishes with a minute-long instrumental, one song shows up two different times on the album, and if you count
Don't Spoil It, there are three other interludes. This whittles down the amount of room for well-written music considerably, and when it shows up, it is still not that great.
After one listen to the album, the novelty wears off immediately. It's all crammed into song titles, the cover art, the fact that somebody got to work with DOOM in the first place.
Czarface Meets Metal Face is nothing more than a neat idea with poor execution. In effect, it is a display of commonplace lyrics that smear production too homogenous for its own good. Czarface got to work with the Supervillain, good for them. But they do not work well together, and this should not happen again.
