It was disappointing last February when label head, Jaime Meline (a.k.a. El-P), announced his profoundly influential Definitive Jux would be going on hiatus until further notice. Claiming he, and the artists involved with the label, want to re-evaluate and reconstruct for the future and turn "the hoopty into a hovercraft," El-P also wants to concentrate on producing and performing. While this is a sort of dagger in the heart for any indie hip-hop fanatic, it also allows the veteran producer time to create work in between work so to speak, which he has done with the Gold Dust released, Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3.
 
While the first two installments of the Megamixxx trilogy were sold exclusively on tour, Hell3 is a wide release that will hold off antsy fans awaiting El-P's next album (due out some time next year). In the meantime we’ve been given fifteen tracks without a lick of lyricism, but who can complain. It would be unnatural for El to release anything less than original, and anyone who’s kept their ear to the underground is aware of his spastic production style, incorporating sirens, lasers, howls, and distant echoes. He approaches his decks with such ferocity it’s as if his eyebrows are tattooed on at a forty-five degree angle. El-P is relentless on every track he produces; and a mean motherfucker when he wants to be, and he always wants to be. Hell3 is no exception. It's bombastic and baneful, sounding like a battleship constructed in some far off space ghetto, and guess what, baby, we're about to go to war. Opening with a pitch fluctuating invite to enter El Producto's realm and get naked, we immediately need to duck for cover from machine gun drum loops and some of the heaviest bass this side of dubstep drenched London.
 
What El really relishes in is taking the listener by surprise. He has you focused on his right hand and then smacks you in the back of the head with his left. Somehow, while refusing to break stride, he manages to never sit in one place for long, and if I may speak metaphorically, it's because he’s exercising his talents. With tracks like “Meanstreak(In 3 Parts)” he tortures his synthesizer before breaking into some Scott La Rock style drum sampling. He draws a line in the sand with “Time Won’t Tell” as he practices a haunting melody, and provides a mouth watering rendition of Young Jeezy’s “I Got This,” and a trunk rattling remix of Kidz in the Hall’s “Driving Down the Block.”

That’s what is so addictive about El-P’s work. While the mainstream feeds us the same shit over and over, he pummels the norm with merciless rhythms (check out his Bieber remix). He proves with Megamixxx3 that even without words he can get his point across. It’s a vital reassurance that even though Def Jux is in the midst of potential disbandment, their leader still has strategic methods to his madness and no plan to leave.