Album Review: Pig Destroyer - Book Burner

From the outset, Book Burner, the fifth full-length from American grindcore savants Pig Destroyer, was going to have some pretty big shoes to fill. The band's last effort, 2007's Phantom Limb, is just about the gold standard of extreme metal, and sounds as innovative now as it did when it first came out. Then there's been the five year wait where anticipation for its follow-up smouldered, and a line-up change that saw the band lose blastmaster general Brian Harvey, which made people immediately question whether whatever would come next could be Phantom Limb good.

Book Burner is a masterpiece, because it cleverly manages to subvert this massive weight of expectation, and uses these subversions as a means for the band to make their music more jarring. Some of the changes are obvious; Scott Hull's guitars haven't been shifted down, J.R. Hayes' vocals are free from the distortion that was ubiquitous across Phantom Limb and new drummer Adam Jarvis has a much more technical death/grind approach than the punky explosions of predecessor Harvey, but other changes between the two albums are much more subtle. For instance, where Phantom Limb opened up with a sample slowly building to the first blast, Book Burner's has an opening sample that cuts away out of nowhere to a maelstrom of grinding.

It's these kind of changes that are incredibly rewarding to discover, and the brilliance of Book Burner is that it's over before you have the time to fully comprehend what's hit you. Meaning you have to keep returning to the record until, many listens in, all those riffs and Hayes' bleak, oppressive lyrics come to sound like extreme metal perfection.