After month after month of polished, factory produced, slicker than shinola music pounding into your ears, slipping in the debut Blunt album from Mood is like putting on your favorite old pair of sneakers. As the downright messy tracks, most of which sound like they were made in somebody's apartment, seep into your domepiece you begin to remember ... yes ... hip hop feels ... GOOD!

Now, let's not be mistaken here. The album Doom has every intention of living up to its title, with subject matter that'd bring a funeral to a halt. Doom hopes to deliver "info to the streets" and tells stream of consciousness "narratives around more positive and educational pursuits" (this is real stuff they sent along with the album). "The day you was born started the countdown to bein' dead," resonates over echoed effects in "Tunnel Bound." Music for the apocalypse, this album makes a fitting soundtrack as the MIRVs fall and mushroom clouds decimate us all.

However, it's also great music to play when you're rollin' in your whip. It's phenomenal music to dance to (remember dancing to hard core music, fellas?). It's beyond perfect music to sit around and shoot the breeze with your boys to. In short, this album is a good listen, no matter if you listen closely and dissect every lyric for nuance and innuendo -- which is highly recommended (the Ricky Ross mention in "Cincinnati," also the group's home town, is soooooo dope) -- or if you turn it on and clean the house.

Every single track -- with special mentions to the looped "oo-ooh" in "Info for the Streets," the seemingly-messed-up-but-flavor-anyway drums of "Karma," to the striking beauty of "Millennium" -- is an underground favorite. Lyrically, the work of Dante, Main-Flo and guests like the Sunz of Man (never better, almost as good as real Wu) and Cin City locals like Talib Kweli and Holmskillet hangs around in the "Grade B" category, occasionally (especially on "Secrets of the Sand" or "Tunnel Bound," where the production slows down juuuuust enough for them to really rip it) nudging its way into the "A" category with sheer hard work and gumption.

This is not the music for that jawn in the tight dress, flossin' behind the velvet rope tryin' to use cleavage for cash. Nuh uh. This is for that dusty lookin' dread with the fringes at the bottom of his pants, that glassy eyed MC freestyling in a circle of heads over spitty beat box rhythms. This album should be placed in the Underground Hall of Fame as a signpost that 1997 put up one hell of a struggle against being whitewashed into radio-flavored playalistic drivel. Mood is definitely a group to watch, and hopefully this is a harbinger of better -- if darker -- things to come from the group in the future.