October 23, 2012 • Relapse Records
Ah, Pig Destroyer. Practically the reason I started listening to grindcore in the first place, and still one of my favorite bands in the genre (not something I'd say lightly). My interest in them has been waning a bit lately, but I couldn't pass up a new album by them, and I'm glad I didn't. Book Burner is the same classic Pig Destroyer you and I know and love, and maybe just a bit improved.
Admittedly, I haven't listened to the band much since their last album came out in 2007 so, at least for me, Book Burner is a perfect reminder that yes, this is a good band and they do grind as good as ever. It isn't often I'll praise a band for sticking to the status quo, but I like Pig Destroyer's status quo enough (and they release albums so infrequently) that it works for them.
The standard guitar-drums-vocals trio continues to work perfectly for them, and they still manage to deliver a pretty damn huge sound as always (and a bass would just muddy things). A bit more of the Agoraphobic Nosebleed sound is leaking through on this album as well (thanks to the shared guitarist), and that's not necessarily a bad thing—Book Burner definitely has noticeably more of that "cyber" sound, with very technical riffs and the occasional sampled drumming. But at the same time they still bring out really catchy, thrashy lines (like the end of the awesome "Eve"); the riffwriting is just so solid across the whole album and there's never really a moment where it gets dull or repetitive.
I can't even really find anything bad to say about the album (okay, some of the sampling is a bit cheesy, but that's not really a big deal). It's just been a while since I got this much into a grind album—hardly anything that came out in the last few years has really done anything for me. But 2012 continues to impress.
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