Backburner is a large crew from Toronto/Halifax/Ottawa, one with many solo artists and subgroups, as you might imagine. One particular trio from Toronto, Swamp Thing, consists of Timbuktu, Chokeules, and Savilion. What makes this particular group compelling is that they pop up ever Halloween with a new release, a tradition that started back in 2012 with Creature Feature. Continuing this tradition, they are now back with a new full-length album, World War Swamp.

The main reason that Swamp Thing began releasing their albums on Halloween is that these three artists came together not just over a love of hip hop, but a love of old horror and science fiction movies, books, and comics as well. This informed their sound to different extents each year, but there’s always reference points and thematic elements spread through the albums. With World War Swamp, which was produced entirely by Savilion, the theme is not necessarily right up front, but it’s lingering there just below the surface. Before we get to any of that, though, we have to acknowledge that the production on this album fucking bumps, elevated to the next level with scratches from DJiRATE. You’re going to want to turn the stereo up for this one. The production itself doesn’t draw that much from spooky source material like previous entries, but with the group pushing the theme from the usual towards this dystopic war-filled vision of the near future, there is this aggressive edge to the beats that fits in right where it needs to be. On the mic, these three come at you with plenty of chemistry and clever shit talking, which they then enhance with pop culture references that get at larger subject matter. You need look no further than “Storms,” featuring Wordburglar and More or Les, which starts out as a fun battle rap with references to Sandman, Roald Dahl, Thunderdome, and Jimmy Hart along the way, only to reveal itself as a song about global warming by the time you get to the end.

World War Swamp is the tenth entry in Swamp Thing’s discography, and they don’t show any signs of slowing down. They shift their style just a little to give us a soundtrack as we fight off our impending doom, whether it be robots, animals, or global warming, but they make it bump and hit you hard with lyrics as well.