The W flashes out once again across the tenements of Shaolin like a sigil of hip-hop vigilance. From the get-go, "Chamber Music" signals a return to the grimy depths of the Wu's 36 Chambers debut, riding on an attack formation of clattering hi-hats and the rapid firing of arpeggio strings. "Careful (Click Click)" is an East Coast corollary to Dr Dre's "Bang Bang": the sound of an empty clip firing; dungeon sounds, jangling percussion and a flute that pervades the atmosphere like cyanide. Throughout the record, familiar soul breaks burst forth as unexpected adjunct to producer-for-life RZA's dread sounds, shaking their bones like skeletons in the closet. On "I Can't Get No Sleep", the epic soul sound takes centre stage, as a perpetual rewind of Isaac Hayes majestic orchestration for "Walk On By" is used as a widescreen canvas for Ghostface and RZA to deliver impassioned war reports from the frontline. (Hayes himself lends his grounded baritone to counter RZA's hysterical lyrical syncopation.) Revolving around a sampled blues vocal, "Hollow Bones" recalls Ghostface Killah's "Motherless Child", while "One Blood Under W" pits sliced-and-diced samples from Portishead's "All Mine" against a soaring Junior Reid vocal. "Conditioner" features an unrepentant ODB drawling abstract nonsense, his ruff, gruff tones perfectly complemented by Snoop Dogg's softly-softly cameo. If you just let it, the back and forth of "Gravel Pit"'s clipped Enter The Dragon loop will get intravenous on your ass and permanently infect the bloodstream. Closer "Jah World" is a psalm that sings the praises of the Wu Divine pitted against Pekinpah sound effects that comes off like Peter Tosh's "Creation". More than just a return to form after Forever, lyrically and musically "The W" is a militant resurrection of the Godz. --Chris Campion