There’s been a fair amount of buzz surrounding Milwaukee death metallers Pig’s Blood over the last few months. Of course, since I’m old and kind of cynical, I’m always skeptical about any band that generates any kind of advanced buzz. Is the buzz because they’re actually good (see: Blood Incantation), or is it because they make predictable music that appeals to the lowest common denominator (see: any recent signee to Sumerian Records). So even though their self-titled debut came out back in June, I’ve been dragging my feet on listening to it because of the buzz around it.
And you know what? I’m a fuckwit.
If I’d bothered to look anything up about the band before allowing my skepticism to get the better of me, I would have seen that Chris Ellis (aka HorriblePerson) of long-running Wisconsin black/crust titans Protestant handles bass and vocal duties in Pig’s Blood, and that would have immediately set my mind at ease. Protestant has pretty much always been unfuckwithable, and Pig’s Blood are off to a pretty good start in terms of earning that distinction themselves.
In terms of their overall sound, the band isn’t really doing anything particularly groundbreaking. They fit pretty neatly in the whole ‘old school death metal revival’ thing that’s been happening over the last few years, but they do it without the so-called cavernous production that many such bands opt for. That’s not to say, however, that the record sounds like some slickly produced modern death metal monstrosity. There’s still plenty of filth in the mix, but no so much that you can’t pick out the riffs. This is a very good thing, because guitarists InfernalScumbag and OverlordOfTheUnderDwellers have concocted an absolutely putrid pile of them for this record that run the gamut from the slow and creeping sections of “Taste the Fucking Poison” to the feral, grinding riffs of “Deniers of the Root” and almost every conceivable place in between. Drummer DrugPervertDeathHammer provides a surprisingly loose and fluid backbone behind the guitars, laying down some pretty creative drum patterns instead of simply relying on his double bass pedal the entire time. HorriblePerson pretty much sounds like he’s vomiting the vocals, which is exactly what I want for this type of music.
So if you’re an idiot like me and have avoided Pig’s Blood thus far because of the buzz around them, stop being a fuckwit. This album totally rips - easily one of the best pure death metal records to come out in 2017.
Pig’s Blood is now available from Godz Ov War Productions.
