Armand Hammer - Haram Album Review

The Alchemist opens with a looped vocal sample that sounds like it is being played through a broken radio, setting the tone for everything that follows. woods enters with a verse about surveillance and state violence, delivered in his signature deadpan. The beat never fully materializes, just fragments of melody and muffled drums. ELUCID's verse fractures mid-thought, his voice cracking as he catalogs small indignities and large betrayals. The hook, if you can call it that, is just a repeated phrase buried in the mix. This is not an invitation. It is a warning that the next forty minutes will not hold your hand. The production feels intentionally unfinished, like walking into a room mid-argument. It works as an opening statement: adjust your expectations or leave now.

A dusty piano loop stumbles over itself while woods describes urban decay with the precision of a documentary filmmaker. The drums sound like they were recorded in a stairwell, all reverb and distance. ELUCID comes in sharper, his flow more aggressive, but the beat refuses to give him anything to lock into. The whole track feels unstable, like standing on a subway platform while the train approaches. The Alchemist's restraint here borders on cruelty, withholding the release the verses seem to demand. But that tension is the point. The track captures the feeling of living in a city that is actively hostile to your survival, where even the infrastructure wants you gone. It is bleak and brilliant and exhausting in equal measure.

The cleanest beat on the album, and by clean I mean you can actually identify the sample before it disintegrates. The Alchemist builds around a jazz loop that sounds like it is being played in the apartment next door, muffled through walls but still recognizable. woods delivers one of his most vivid verses, weaving together colonialism, gentrification, and personal paranoia into a single narrative thread. ELUCID matches the energy with a verse that reads like redacted government documents, half the information blacked out but the implications clear. The production here actually breathes, giving the rappers room to work. This is the track to play for someone who thinks Armand Hammer is just noise. It has structure, momentum, and a hook you can almost hum. Almost. But it still sounds like the end of something, not the beginning.

A deceptive title for a track that sounds like winter in the Bronx. The beat is sparse, just a bass throb and scattered percussion, like The Alchemist forgot to finish the arrangement. woods uses the space to describe climate disaster and economic collapse as the same phenomenon, his flow so casual you almost miss how apocalyptic the content is. ELUCID's verse is shorter, more direct, anger cutting through the murk. The whole track feels like watching storm clouds gather, that specific dread of knowing something bad is coming but not knowing when. The minimalism here works because the writing is so dense. Strip away the production and these are just two poets describing the end of the world over a metronome. Add the atmosphere back and it becomes unbearable in the best way.

The Alchemist samples what sounds like a warped string section, the melody constantly bending out of tune. It is disorienting and beautiful, like watching something decay in fast-forward. woods raps about food politics and colonialism, connecting the dots between agriculture and empire. ELUCID follows with a verse that feels like stream-of-consciousness, images piling on top of each other without transition. The track has no clear structure, no verse-hook-verse formula, just two rappers and a producer creating controlled chaos. Some listeners will call this their favorite on the album. Others will skip it after thirty seconds. Both responses are valid. This is Armand Hammer at their most challenging, prioritizing texture over accessibility. I respect it more than I enjoy it, but that might change on the fiftieth listen.

I heard this for the first time on a February morning in Crown Heights, frost on the sidewalk, everyone walking too fast to stay warm. The beat sounds like that feels: cold, hard surfaces, no comfort anywhere. woods describes religious disillusionment with the precision of a theologian who stopped believing but kept the training. ELUCID's verse is quieter, almost whispered, the audio mix pushing his voice back in the stereo field like he is talking to himself. The Alchemist layers the production so that nothing sits comfortably in the mix. Drums punch through at random intervals. The sample cuts out mid-phrase. It is deliberately uncomfortable, and it works. This track will never be anyone's favorite, but it is essential to the album's architecture. It deepens the claustrophobia, makes the next track hit harder by contrast.

The Alchemist flips a soul sample into something unrecognizable, chopping it until it sounds alien. woods uses the disorientation to describe diaspora and displacement, his flow more rhythmic here, almost musical. ELUCID's verse is angrier, voice rising in the mix, fighting against the beat instead of riding it. The track has the most traditional structure on the album, which is like saying it is the least weird song on a Kool Keith record. There is still no hook, no chorus, just two verses and atmosphere. But the production here actually builds, tension rising through the second half before dissolving into static. It is one of the few moments on Haram where The Alchemist allows something close to a climax. The track works as a brief respite before the album descends deeper into abstraction.

Pure dread distilled into three minutes. The Alchemist builds the beat from what sounds like industrial machinery, metal scraping against metal, no melody at all. woods describes construction and destruction as the same process, gentrification as violence in slow motion. His flow here is so matter-of-fact it makes the content even more chilling. ELUCID matches the bleakness with a verse about infrastructure and empire, every line referencing something that was built on top of something that was demolished. The track has no release, no catharsis, just sustained unease. Some days this is the best song on the album. Other days it is the one I skip because I do not have the emotional capacity. The Alchemist's production here is fearless, willing to alienate listeners in service of the concept. It is not enjoyable, but it is important.

The beat sounds like it is playing underwater, everything muffled and distant. woods and ELUCID trade shorter verses, their flows overlapping in the mix, voices bleeding into each other. The Alchemist buries everything under reverb and distortion, making it hard to distinguish words from atmosphere. This is the album at its most experimental, closer to spoken word over ambient noise than traditional rap. Some will call it genius. Some will call it unlistenable. I land somewhere in between. The track works conceptually, capturing the feeling of dissociation, of watching your own life from a distance. But it is also exhausting, more endurance test than song. Essential for the album's arc, skippable on individual listens.

Back to something closer to traditional boom-bap, if boom-bap was recorded in a basement during a blackout. The drums actually knock here, and The Alchemist gives the rappers a loop they can lock into. woods describes revenge fantasies and survivor's guilt, his voice carrying more emotion than usual. ELUCID's verse is vicious, every line a small act of violence against someone who deserves it. The track has momentum, a sense of forward motion the album has mostly avoided. It is not catchy, but it is gripping. This would be a standout on most experimental rap albums. Here it is just another strong entry in a collection of strong entries. The production is excellent, The Alchemist finding the balance between accessibility and unease.

The best pure rap song on the album. The Alchemist samples what sounds like a Latin jazz record, the horns warm and full before he chops them into something sinister. woods delivers a verse about food, family, and violence, connecting personal memory to historical trauma without ever making the connection explicit. It is some of his finest writing, every line doing triple duty. ELUCID follows with a verse that feels like a response, not to woods but to the world, cataloging injuries and indignities with surgical precision. The beat here actually grooves, as much as anything on Haram grooves. The drums are clear, the bassline present, the structure coherent. This is the track that proves Armand Hammer could make conventional rap if they wanted to. They just choose not to. Essential listening, the clearest distillation of what makes this collaboration work.

Short, abrasive, almost punk in its refusal to develop. The Alchemist builds the beat from harsh noise and minimal drums, giving woods and ELUCID almost nothing to work with. Both rappers respond with clipped, aggressive verses, every word bitten off. The whole track feels like an argument, voices raised, no resolution. It works as a palate cleanser, a burst of adrenaline in an album that mostly operates at a slow burn. But it is also slight, more interlude than full song. Some listeners will love its economy, the way it makes its point and exits. Others will wonder why it is here at all.

Named for the New York urban planner who destroyed Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods to build highways and stadiums, and the track sounds like demolition. The Alchemist's beat is just rubble, fragments of samples and drums that never cohere into rhythm. woods describes the violence of city planning, how policy becomes physical force. ELUCID's verse is more abstract, images of displacement and resistance piling up without linear narrative. This is one of the densest tracks on the album, requiring multiple listens and possibly a history degree to fully unpack. It is brilliant and exhausting. The kind of song you admire more than enjoy. The Alchemist's production here is fearless, prioritizing concept over listenability. It should not work. Somehow it does.

The album ends with a whimper, not a bang. The Alchemist builds the beat from ambient hum and scattered percussion, more soundscape than song. woods and ELUCID deliver verses that feel like final thoughts, summing up without summarizing. The writing is dense, exhausted, the voices of two people who have said everything they came to say and are now just documenting what remains. The production fades out slowly, the beat dissolving into static and silence. It is an appropriate ending for an album that refused easy resolution at every turn. Some will find it anticlimactic. I find it honest. This is not music that believes in triumphant finales. It just stops when there is nothing left to say.