"For Book Burner, we felt that we needed to come out of the gate fighting," says Pig Destroyer founder and guitarist Scott Hull. The five-year gap since the Virginia grindcore band's previous full-length, Phantom Limb, is the longest they've ever endured. Faced with their first line-up change in over a decade, as well as moving to a new rehearsal space and building their own studio, the band spent the last few years writing material on and off.
"Book Burner was a lot more complicated of a process than our previous releases. I started the first track in 2010 and probably ended writing in 2012, so that was over two years and three different drummers," Hull explains. "So it was really hard to stay with any kind of particular focus."
For this fifth album, Hull's main concern was returning to Pig Destroyer's roots. He describes Phantom Limb as an experiment, favouring longer, catchier tracks over traditional grindcore's customary pithy, vicious spats. "We didn't need to go down that path any further. We started this band as a grindcore band and we wanted to get back to what we had started with back in 1997, which was really fast, ugly, short, ragtag grindcore songs."
With 19 songs in 32 minutes, Book Burner is unquestionably a classic grind release, featuring visceral, whiplash-fast tracks that encompass machine-like drumming and blazing guitar work that is precise and unpredictable. Hull attributes the fiery aggression that permeates the record to not being able to move forward with Book Burner for those few years.
"It's an artefact of the situation that we had, so there's a lot of disparity there," he says. "It was a very angry, intense desire to just get something done that we were happy with. I think we always set out to make a blistering grindcore album and it either is or it isn't. In this case it is."
"Book Burner was a lot more complicated of a process than our previous releases. I started the first track in 2010 and probably ended writing in 2012, so that was over two years and three different drummers," Hull explains. "So it was really hard to stay with any kind of particular focus."
For this fifth album, Hull's main concern was returning to Pig Destroyer's roots. He describes Phantom Limb as an experiment, favouring longer, catchier tracks over traditional grindcore's customary pithy, vicious spats. "We didn't need to go down that path any further. We started this band as a grindcore band and we wanted to get back to what we had started with back in 1997, which was really fast, ugly, short, ragtag grindcore songs."
With 19 songs in 32 minutes, Book Burner is unquestionably a classic grind release, featuring visceral, whiplash-fast tracks that encompass machine-like drumming and blazing guitar work that is precise and unpredictable. Hull attributes the fiery aggression that permeates the record to not being able to move forward with Book Burner for those few years.
"It's an artefact of the situation that we had, so there's a lot of disparity there," he says. "It was a very angry, intense desire to just get something done that we were happy with. I think we always set out to make a blistering grindcore album and it either is or it isn't. In this case it is."
