3 out of 5

Going into this blind.*

A year into their reformation, Part Chimp continue the preceding album’s trend of ditching some of the more direct foolishness from their initial run, excepting peripheral stuff: an album title (and some songs) that’s a riff on their previous album, ‘Thriller,’ as well as being something of a pun; and a switch to their own label, Chart Pimp, which shares its winky name with their debut release from 2009.

This presumed maturation of sound is defined by a focus on their volume and deep grooves over freakouts, though we get some of those as well. That is a welcome change overall, I think, as it syncs with the group somewhat slowing down and taking stock of what defines Part Chimp beyond bluster, but by that same token, when we’re slowed down and doing mostly reverbed / distorted, monotone vocals, a la Atombombpocketknife, Cheap Thriller gets boiled down to an almost slocore stomp at points, and can prove to be a bit repetitive – lacking in musical range – past its middle. From a zoomed out level, there’s a gamble PC is playing with, which very much delays Cheap’s payoffs: opener Lies has a heavy hitting riff, but it crawls to no conclusion, with its vocal mantra shunted way into the background. This pattern arguably continues through Dirty Sun, and then FTG as well – which picks up the pace but similarly doesn’t much evolve beyond a riff. We’re finally on to a fully formed song with The Watcher, which is a badass, grandiose experience with all of the pent-up, bass-heavy mass of the album unleashed.

This approach of taking several tracks to essentially warmup continues in greater and less amounts throughout Cheap Thriller, with some ‘intro’ tracks particularly wandering versions of that warmup, if leading into some of the album’s best songs. And fittingly, we conclude on another all-time epic, with the solotastic Trad.

The recording is pretty sick throughout, really shaking those speakers, and you’ll undoubtedly be tapping your toe the whole while, but the slow-roll approach applied to an almost drone-like sensibility makes it hard to parse the intention of the album outside of some clearer singles.

*…And then you realize that Cheap Thriller is actually a riff on Thriller, as it’s an odds and sods collection of outtakes and rarities, mostly from that album’s session. As such, the lack of hits kinda makes sense – they were parceled out to Thriller – and the fact that it was arranged into a cohesive (if somewhat underwhelming) album is impressive, as-is the consistency in the recording sound. Still, the review above stands, with maybe another half star allotted due to this note.