All Pigs Must Die: even after a decade of band names evoking countless forms of violent death, dying fetuses, every disease in a medical dictionary, and hundreds of creative methods of vaginal demolishment, that name sticks out. It reminds me of how Pig Destroyer got their name: wanting to go with the most confrontational moniker they could conjure, they went from Cop Killer to Cop Destroyer to Pig Destroyer. But whereas that band has a paper-thin veil of vagueness as to what their moniker means — me, I thought they were a Mike Patton-y or Devin Townshend-esque squiggly omni-metal band until I actually heard them — All Pigs Must Die don’t fuck around. If your uncle is a cop, you can’t wear their shirts to cookouts (and as an added bonus, if your older sister is a vegan, you can’t wear their shirts to her solstice gatherings). And with a name with all the subtlety of a bottle of Old English being smashed over your face, it’s pretty easy to tell what they sound like: hardcore. Serious fucking hardcore. And I can’t tell if their name is so appealing because their brand of annihilation is so alluring, or if their brand of annihilation is so appealing because it’s attached to that name. All I know is I can’t stop saying it, or at least find reasons to say it as often as possible.

All Pigs Must Die aren’t straightforward, however: they borrow liberally from grind, doom, and even trace elements of death and black metal. All Pigs Must Die aren’t ADD genre-benders, though. All Pigs Must Die are here to obliterate, to tear down buildings, call the architect, then piss in the rubble when he arrives; they crib from whatever they have to in order to make sure maximum destruction is promised. All Pigs Must Die are a relic from a time when hardcore smelled bad, slept in vans, had gas station food as a main source of sustenance, and played for gas money to a few dozen kids a night. And even if All Pigs Must Die don’t sound like the bands I’m making reference to in the previous sentence, their spirit is there: energy for days, forehead-vein anger in endless supply, and most of all, urgency. All Pigs Must Die remind you that hardcore is ANGRY, and that while metal is too, sometimes catharsis isn’t best handled with surgical precision, but via blunt, brash force. All Pigs Must Die are nothing but that.

I mean, check out the title of All Pigs Must Die’s latest: God is War. All Pigs Must Die, once again, aren’t fucking around: their band name is a brass-knuckled backhand to cops, and their album title is a steel boot to the crotch of religion. While All Pigs Must Die aren’t the first band to take on either of these issues– hell, Deicide have made a career out of strictly the latter — All Pigs Must Die do it in blunt fashion, sans cleverness, irony, or needlessly pretentious literary allusions. All Pigs Must Die’s God is War is thirty-two minutes of aggressive music, absent of the need to impress scene kids, labels looking to gobble up whatever said scene kids are looking to blindly spend their disposable income on, or car companies looking to cross promote. Sure, All Pigs Must Die make varied music that differs from song to song, but it’s naturalistic: parts of songs dissolve into eachother because they’re meant to, and disparate elements aren’t employed to cater to beardos (or needlessly verbose MetalSucks writers who can’t grow a beard but still listen to a lot of Neurosis and Isis and bands that sound like them), but because they best service the whole. All Pigs Must Die are relentless on God is War: just a flash of d-beats, blasts, clear-the-floor grooves (NO breakdowns necessary), and fierce, pointed shouting.

Other bands will gently lead you, one hand on your back, down a path until eventually a point is reached, and you make of it what you will. All Pigs Must Die are an inch and half from your face, washing your chin with spittle. There’s no subtlety, nothing to be pondered here. Just aggression. Somewhere along the line, hardcore stopped being that and started being music you plug into a formula to cater to the dumbest kids in the room. God is War has excellent production value, but the end result is raw. No breakdowns, no At the Gates riffs, no gang vocals about doing your best and believing in yourself. Life is shit for a lot of people right now, and even if you don’t think all pigs must die, All Pigs Must Die are parroting back to you your most primal anger and seeking a reaction. Whether or not they care if it’s positive, well, that’s all in their name.

(4 out of 5 horns)

-SO