Mic Mountain – “The Avalanche” (Album Review)
Every now and then you come across a source of potential. Much like a gold mine, it takes effort to get to that polished final product that we all strive for. There’s the excavating and digging, the refining – and then when all of that is done you’re left with a valuable item. This is how I feel about Mic Mountain and his 2018 release, “The Avalanche.”
Right off the bat, the audio quality is raw and uncut. It’s entirely unavoidable with the low quality mixing and production, but hey, sometimes emcees work with what they have. Recording with a microphone that sounds like a landline from the early 2000’s is all too real in this project. But maybe it’s not the mic, because sometimes – actually, a lot of times – it’s the instrumentals that sound fuzzy and distorted if not mastered well.
Diving into his writing, it’s not bad. He’s got decent flow, some decent bars. His style reminds me of a MF Doom mixed with Lil B. He has a clean 90’s flow sometimes very reminiscent of Biggie, and the way his words bounce to the beat can be hypnotic and pleasing to the listener.
My only complaint for this project is that the instrumentals sound very basic. From what I noticed, most of the beats are just two to four bars repeating. I don’t remember hearing a single break throughout the entire album. It essentially sounds like the basic functions of FL Studio were implemented over a few default sample loops seventeen times and then packed together to make an album.
To summarize, Mic Mountain needs to clean up the audio quality, make or find fleshed out beats that capture the listener, and not put out ignorantly egotistical and dumb content. But he has potential and if he combines all the right elements, I could be writing a review with a very different tone in the near future. I wouldn’t count him out yet.
Highlights: 90’s Vibe
Rating: 6/10
Follow Mic Mountain on FB, Twitter, Youtube, and at his website.
