PLEASE NOTE THIS SHOW IS 14+

This is State of the Art, the fifth studio album from Hilltop Hoods, Australia’s premier Hip Hop crew.

State of the Art is the Hoods’ official follow-up to their 2006 award-winning album The Hard Road.

It’s been a long time coming, but State of the Art is everything Hood fans could have wished for. It’s dark, heavy, challenging, raw and occasionally funny. It’s State of the Art in sound and soul. Prepare to be surprised from the explosive opening track, the aptly-titled ‘The Return’, right through to the closing cut ‘Fifty In Five’, which sees the last fifty years deconstructed and reconstructed in a flash right in front of your very ears. It’s breathtaking.

State of the Art is unmistakably the Hoods, but quite unlike anything they’ve ever done before. Lots of guitars, strings and other sounds you can’t quite make out all interweaving in a cutting-edge cacophony of words, rhymes and the heaviest of samples.

Its Hilltop Hoods continuing to rewrite the Hip Hop rulebook, not only in the Australian context, but taking their challenge to the world stage as one of the first local crews to have a serious release in Europe and North America. In 2006 their fourth album, The Hard Road changed everything, it debuted on top of the national mainstream charts, an achievement completely unprecedented in the history of Australian Hip Hop. It also won the ARIA Awards for best urban and best independent release, as well as taking out the 2006 J Award for album of the year.

A year later came the groundbreaking remix project, The Hard Road Restrung, which saw the Hood collaborate with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Restrung took out another ARIA Award for best urban release. 2007 also saw the release of the live DVD, City of Light.

Ever since then, the Hoods have worked virtually non-stop on State of the Art in their home studios in Adelaide.

Several of the new tracks, including State of the Art’s first single ‘Chase That Feeling’ (which features a return guest appearance from members from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra) took literally dozens and dozens of hours to record and edit.

Another key track, ‘Classic Example’, is a collaboration with legendary New York rapper, Pharoahe Monch. Traditional Hip Hop at it’s finest.

“This is probably the heaviest album we’ve done,” is Suffa’s summation of State of the Art. “And probably by a fair bit as well.” “There are definitely some tougher tracks on it,” agrees Pressure. “Hopefully it’s got elements of The Hard Road and The Calling on it, and with the strings it’s got elements of Restrung. With Lowrider in there (the Hoods recent touring companions) it’s got elements of what we’ve been doing live. I’m personally more proud of this record than any other album we’ve done. I think it’s definitely our most consistent piece from start to finish.”

Making State of the Art all the more significant is that it’s the first album released through the Hoods’ very own new label Golden Era Records. State of the Art will take the world by storm.