No Love Deep Web

Background and recording The album was first announced in early 2012 along with the release of two tracks from their album The Money Store, and was originally titled No Love. A sticker was included in the physical release of The Money Store that read: "No Love. Fall 2012." on the reverse side. On April 4, 2012, Death Grips announced dates for an international supporting tour for The Money Store, later adding more to the list. However, shortly after the release of The Money Store, the group cancelled the entire tour so that they could finish the recording of No Love. Recording of the album took place from May to August 31, 2012, at MC Ride and Zach Hill's apartment in Sacramento, California. On August 12, 2012, Death Grips announced through Pitchfork that the title of the album had been changed to No Love Deep Web and that they had recorded 20 tracks for the album and were narrowing it down to 13 tracks. Style In an interview with Exclaim! the group said that: "No Love is [...] sort of a culmination of our two previous releases." In August 2012, the band told Pitchfork: "there are no manually programmed drums on this album, the beats are being played live on a Roland electronic v-drum set or acoustic drum set by Zach. There are no features, guest collabs or outside producers. The material is cold, bass heavy, minimal, rock and roll influenced and could simultaneously fit into a rave or dance club context. It is essentially rap and electronic music while at times extremely aggressive." ==Promotion==

To promote No Love Deep Web the group created an alternate reality game (ARG) which ran from August 12–16, 2012, beginning minutes after their release of a statement about the album through Pitchfork. Using the internet as its medium, it mainly employed encrypted archive files hosted on the Tor Network with the filetype .gpg. The game employed many types of encryption through image, text and sound files, including Braille, QR code, Base64, the Caesar cipher, Binary code, Morse code and the Affine cipher, and used websites such as Imgur and various Tor related sites. The game yielded the first mention of the original release date of No Love Deep Web, October 23, 2012, and an unmastered version of The Money Store for download on the first day. On the fifth day, an instrumental version of The Money Store was discovered by users of 4chan on a .onion domain and uploaded for regular download. Throughout August, the group announced plans for live shows, including a gig at Electric Ballroom, London, and participation in festivals such as the Pitchfork Music Fest Paris and the Big Day Out. ==Release==

On September 30, 2012, Death Grips announced through their Facebook and Twitter accounts that their record label refused to release the album until "next year sometime" instead of the intended date of October 23, 2012. They then released the track listing and told fans to stay tuned for midnight on October 1. On the next day the band self-released the album through a website posted via Twitter as well as SoundCloud, and various filesharing services including BitTorrent. Later that day, it was revealed that Death Grips topped BitTorrent's "List of Most Legally Downloaded Music" following the release of No Love Deep Web, with 34,151,432 downloads. Upon its release, No Love Deep Web was met with a swarm of media attention. Several hours after its release, the group's official website was shut down. In an interview, Zach Hill claimed that their record label, Epic, shut it down; however, Epic denied any involvement. The website reappeared shortly after. On October 31, 2012, Death Grips posted confidential emails they received from Epic concerning their copyright infringement on Facebook. The emails, dated October 1, 2012, revealed that Epic planned to receive the original album masters from the group and release the album in stores, but following the leak of the letters, Epic announced that they worked to end their relationship with Death Grips. On November 19, 2013, No Love Deep Web was released on vinyl and CD through Harvest Records, as well as being made available on streaming services. In October 2022, in celebration of its 10-year anniversary, the album was reissued as a vinyl release for Record Store Day. The reissued vinyl includes an alternate cover, featuring a shirtless MC Ride standing on the edge of the balcony of their room at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, giving the middle finger with both hands, while holding a cigarette in one of them. ==Artwork and controversy==

No Love Deep Web was met with controversy related to its album cover, which depicts the image of Zach Hill's erect penis with the album title written across it. The picture was taken in a bathroom at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, where the band stayed for the two months leading up to the leak. Due to the explicit album artwork, Death Grips placed a disclaimer on their website warning that "US law states you must be 18 years of age to view graphic sexual material. We consider this art." The 2013 Harvest release features the original artwork packaged in a black slipcase with a disclaimer stating that the artwork is explicit. The slipcase has to be removed before the album cover is shown. ==Reception==

No Love Deep Web was met with positive reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 76, which indicates "generally favorable", based on 13 reviews. In a mixed review of the album, Evan Rytlewski of The A.V. Club said "Even at a meaty 46 minutes, the album still suffers from a feeling of writer's block." ==Track listing==