THANK GOD! GIANT FROM THE X TELEPATHIC GOTHIKA ISSUE #5: ALBUM REVIEW

Big Up Menace X’s five-part autobiography is complete. After two years of projects digging through a tortured man’s mind, we have reached its beautiful and transformative conclusion. The final installment of Big Up Menace X’s autobiography, titled THANK GOD! GIANT FROM THE X TELEPATHIC GOTHIKA ISSUE #5, is a subtle yet stark departure from his previous work. It feels like an emotional conclusion to a lifelong journey. The entire work is an extremely intricate and personal conversation that we are lucky enough to overhear. The album pushes experimental boundaries in all the right ways and demonstrates mastery over the form.

THANK GOD! is full of beautiful vignettes and stunning moments of clarity. While some of Big Up Menace X’s earlier projects felt a bit random, THANK GOD! feels carefully orchestrated and aligned while still maintaining its free-flowing energy. A great example of this balance occurs on the track “JATAMANSI…” where Big Up Menace X expertly blends electronic, symphonic, and noise elements to reach a series of striking crescendos. Big Up Menace X blends samples and live instrumentation, to create frenetic walls of sound. Each moment feels full of tension, yet most tracks feel blissful at the same time. The album always keeps moving forward and the story continues to evolve.

The exact autobiographical tale that Big Up Menace X is telling is nearly impossible to follow. The story is clearly meant to be understood by the storyteller but not by the listener. The album’s climaxes are heavenly and its lows are dark and painful, but as a narrative, it’s impossible to make sense of. The song “47 REASONS WHY I LOVE FIREFLY” is one of the more heavenly moments on the album. While a beautiful guitar strum echoes in the background, we hear caterwauling vocals, creating a dreamy atmosphere until the dream is suddenly interrupted by distortion. The song then slips into a rap verse before concluding in frantic synth arpeggios. The song goes everywhere are nowhere at the same time. It’s a beautiful and terrifying experience.

Many moments on this album stand out as being unlike anything I have heard before in music. “CLOTH OF GOLD…” blends some Alice Coltrane-like chanting with a hard rock guitar riff and some jazzy drumming. “ELK MOUNTAINS…” ends with an isolated opera sample over a distorted rap beat. On “ROCKY ROADS…” there is a rap verse that is so distorted that I couldn’t make out a single word. “WOLF SPIDER” sounds a bit like a typical song by MIKE if he took acid and was speeding down a freeway while recording. All of these moments fit into a singular vision, and Big Up Menace X strives for a sound that can’t be captured or defined immediately.

THANK GOD! is an incredibly constructed album. You can feel the depth and care behind every sample that Big Up Menace X chooses. It offers the best of his previous work while building on the orchestration he hinted at before. THANK GOD! proves Big Up Menace X is a fantastic conductor and THANK GOD! is a powerful way to end his sonic journey.