At its best, Pig Destroyer recalls Brutal Truth's most inspired moments (see Need to Control or Sounds of the Animal Kingdom), trading heavily in funeral-blast grindcore spasms. Painter of Dead Girls collects the band's split EPs into one self-contained 17-minute compilation, all songs recorded between 1999 and 2003. The group at times channels the Melvins (the doom-sludge moments of "Patterns of Failure"), spastic punk rock ("Fuck You Up and Get High"), and schizoid hardcore (the chugging breakdowns of "Forgotten Child"), the songs passing by like scarred, twisted metal Armageddon landscapes at mach 3. Covers of the Stooges' "Down in the Streets" (surprisingly conventional) and Helmet's "In the Meantime" (murky and corroded) round out the collection with a nudge and a wink, slowing things down enough to make you realize that most of Painter of Dead Girls speeds by, quite entertainingly, lickety-split. Sure, this is a collection of odds'n'sods, but it adheres to Pig Destroyer's nasty standards of excellence, and anyone who sunk his incisors into the deliciously raw and bloody meat of Prowler in the Yard will want to track it down. ~ John Serba

Rovi