Terrifyer (Deluxe 20th Anniversary)

Pig Destroyer aren't out for the middle of the road presentation with this album given the Ralph Steadman/Gerald Scarfe-styled cover art, then again it's hard to see how they would be interested in that approach in the first place. Perhaps thankfully, the cover's nowhere near as grotesque to look at as the cover of Prowler in the Yard. That said, the music? Now that high-speed grindcore of any variety is about to move into its third decade of existence, it'll take accomplished performers to step up to the plate, and this trio does have the goods -- the main album itself is over 20 tracks in 32 minutes and completely nails it in terms of strong, honestly memorable performances. Where so many groups rely on undifferentiated blur, guitarist Scott Hull and drummer Brian Harvey are masters of brief, brilliant riffs and drum blasts that are memorable hooks as much as sheer rampage. The stop-start on-a-dime switches between the songs make the entire album one long but constantly changing listen. Songs like "Gravedancer" and "Carrion Fairy" are practically classic rock in ways and all the better for it, welding together a slew of familiar styles into something memorable in its own right. Even the sudden dropout on "Lost Cause" to a dramatic, hard to fully understand conversation/shouting match between two people acts as a needed deep breath before returning to the pit. What fans may be even more intrigued by is the bonus second disc, an audio DVD presentation called "Natasha" even longer than Terrifyer by five minutes. Pitched somewhere between a very long song and a movie without visuals (the presentation was mixed in 5.1 sound for those with such a setup), with both lyrics and a related short story reprinted in the booklet, it's the complete opposite of Terrifyer's sound -- slow, considered, many pauses, even intelligible lyrics -- but is equally powerful in its own right. ~ Ned Raggett