Pig Destroyer - Hyperviolet

Just listen to the whole damned thing

Upon writing this review I stopped referring to Prowler In The Yard as an album, and used the word realm in its omission. A sickeningly hateful, unashamed realm, blanketing nothing, leaving the bloodied toolshed unaltered for the forensics team. No forced Cannibal Corpse or Broken Hope or Devourment album has ever felt like a point-a-to-point-b visual transcript of a chainsaw massacre. Everything, from the freakish, grisly front cover (courtesy of super-talented Paul Booth, the tattooist with a waitlist longer than a Sleep album), to the surreal, drugged intro and outro, and the unshakeable nightmare sandwiched in between, is unsettling and feverish. Lyricist/vocalist/obvious-creative-writing-major J.R. Hayes envisions this realm through shivers of ghastly images, captured through bulbs of flash photography, screams bursting into white blindness. Scott Hull, the sole guitarist (no bass) is the deceiver, wrapping his large, barbed-wire guitar strings around the ears many times, audibly resulting in what sounds like a trio of axes. Rounding out the trio with spastic, hyperblasting drummer Brian Harvey, Piggy D defies not only the conventions of death metal and grindcore (I still don’t know what to call this realm), but defies the logic of how many and how and a band should work. Twenty-two tracks on this realm and I can’t tell when the first eighteen start and stop, which is very intentional, as sometimes, a good story should remain unpredictable, all while Hull’s riffs, its actors, are too convincing. One thumb down for song Trojan Whore, a too-close-for-comfort rip-off of Honey Bucket by The Melvins, an obscurity only those who nitpick will despise. Favorite track: Hyperviolet, a perfect, abbreviated summation of said realm, for those both squeamish and in a rush.