Pig Destroyer Challenges Your Intellect And Indulges Your Inner Brute

Because some of our readers may, in fact, be so full of vitriol that the combination of Justin Timberlake and Paxil just isn’t doin’ it for them anymore, we bring you our bimonthly metal column, “Angry Music for Angry People,” written by MetalSucks‘ Axl Rosenberg, a.k.a. Matthew Goldenberg. In this installment, he’s caught between the intellectual and face-smashing impulses of grindcore giants Pig Destroyer:

Band: Pig Destroyer Sub-genre(s): Grindcore, death metal Best known for: Having the most awesome name of any band in any musical genre, ever. For people who like: Intellectual conversation, dumb animalism, bacon Most interesting member: Guitarist Scott Hull: Aside from being in Pig Destroyer, he has a multitude of side bands (most famously Agoraphobic Nosebleed), produces and engineers other bands’ albums at his own studio, Visceral Sound, and maintains a day job doing mysterious computer work for the government. Fun fact: The band has no bass player. Hey, they’re just like the White Stripes! Overview: The fact that Pig Destroyer’s name is so laugh-out-loud obvious in its machsimo, and at the same time intended as a political statement–it’s a euphemism for “cop killer”… Ice-T must be so proud!–perfectly illustrates this Virginia quartet’s central dichotomy: How can anything so violent be so high-minded?

Grindcore, the particular metallic subgenre in which Pig Destroyer specializes, is a loud, aggressive, hook-less, and often atonal form of music, and the genre’s drummers, like PD skinsman Brian Havey, specialize in “blast beats” played as fast as humanly possible. The music is ridiculously speedy in general; with some notable exceptions, songs rarely hit the two minute mark. To the untrained ear Pig Destroyer’s music may sound like little more than noise, lacking any melody whatsoever. The lyrics often indulge in violent and misogynistic fantasies, and grindcore concerts can likewise turn into appropriately violent affairs. The audience for music like this is so small that there’s nothing boardroom-tested about it; these guys do it out of genuine love, especially since there’s no chance of there ever being any real money in grindcore, ever.

And yet Pig Destroyer are as provocative and intellectual as they are indulgent when it comes to the listener’s inner big dumb brute. The music’s bizarre time signatures and rhythmic shifts attract a hearty amount of music-theory nerds, and screamer/shouter/barker/schizo-dude-on-the-street impersonator J.R. Hayes’ lofty language (on “Terrifyer,” he screeches “She moves across the rose garden suspended in a dark cloud of flies”) allows for hours of scrutinizing. The push and pull that comes from having a post-graduate degree and still wanting to hit someone in the face is what makes this band so fascinating. Pig Destroyer’s music is something of an acquired taste, to be sure, but that’s part of the point: everything about Pig Destroyer is intended to challenge you, shock you, shake you, violently wake you from your stupor.