Pig Destroyer, Book Burner
Featured Album
All flesh and no fat
Like other extreme acts, Pig Destroyer write songs about murder, insanity and mayhem, but there’s something grimier and more disconcerting about their tunes than your average Cannibal Corpse gorefest. With the release of 2004′s Terrifyer, the band was already rising above the constraints of traditional grindcore, incorporating industrial sound bites, death-groove riffs, doomy atmospherics and math-metal tempo changes into their schizophrenic songs. Brutally misanthropic, their songs grimly reflect the rage, intensity and social disconnect of minds on the edge. Book Burner is no different: “The Bug” begins with a dissonant audio collage, over which a demented voice declares, “I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse” and from there evolves through cacophonous blast beats, propulsive riffs, and pained moans. Equally nightmare-inducing is the opening track, “Sis,” where vocalist J.R. Hayes (ex-Agoraphobic Nosebleed) roars, “My sister’s dangerous/ She climbs the barbed wire fence/ Changes clothes in the back seat/ Medical gown to red jeans.” There is nothing “pretty” about their music, but visceral savagery has its own allure.
Book Burner delivers all flesh and no fat; Pig Destroyer attack with pinpoint precision, plowing through 19 cuts in just under 33 minutes and mapping out when to pummel, trudge and lacerate. The tag team of acrobatic drummer Adam Jarvis (who also plays in Misery Index) and guitarist and producer Scott Hull (ex-Anal Cunt) both boast the ability to turn sick, horrific and off-kilter clamor into coherent, memorable compositions.
