Rhythm & Views

Pig Destroyer

Avant-grindcore trio Pig Destroyer's latest offering is so wickedly evil that it won't even play on my office computer. No matter: It sounds just fine on my wife's high school-era Yamaha at home, and she doesn't appreciate the music in the slightest. Why? Well, the band sounds exactly like the slaughterhouse its name suggests.

Recorded in various home-recording studios between 1999 and 2003, Painter of Dead Girls is a collection of songs that most likely didn't merit inclusion on Pig Destroyer's upcoming Relapse full-length. Rather than shit-can the results, however, the band has released the material on the small, Virginia-based Robotic Empire label. While I can't recommend Painter to fans of mainstream music, I can still endorse PD as one of the top three bands working within the aggressive-music genre, alongside such groundbreakers as Converge and Curl Up and Die. If you're looking for something to clear the sinuses, PD will blow your brains out.

Track eight, "Blond Prostitute," particularly showcases what PD has to offer: weirdly poetic lyrics ("For a split second your eyes were lambs / As my fingers slipped around your neck on the way to heaven") staple-gunned to nightmarish thrashing--like the sound of someone being strangled to death in a basement. Other highlights? Try the pure carnage of "Purity Undone" and "White Sand." Or the savage covers of the Stooges' "Down in the Street" and Helmet's "In the Meantime."

Even without a bass player, PD brings your worst thoughts to sonic life: war, pedophilia, murder. Nasty, brutal stuff.