Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Full Length Review: BEASTIAL PIGLORD "Sunder" (Slorebs Castle Records) by Dave Wolff

Location: Kinston, North Carolina
Country: USA
Genre: Extreme metal
Full Length: Sunder
Label: Slorebs Castle Records
Format: CD, digital, streaming
Release date: July 9, 2019
Sunder is Beastial Piglord’s fifth full length since 2016, and be forewarned it’s a ceremony celebrating everything related to irrationality and derangement. The genre Beastial Piglord is classified under sounds rigid enough, and you might expect straight goregrind with lots of samples, but this isn’t the case. The term “extreme metal” as applied here is defined as a fusion of black, death, doom and sludge metal with ambient and atmospheric elements. Doubtless you’ve heard the same classifications but Beastial Piglord go beyond them if you like heavy and experimental music. When I pried for information about this project, what I got included the stage name of the man behind it. For anonymity’s sake he prefers to be known only as Hudson. It worked for the late Quorthon (Bathory); how could one not be curious. You have to listen to this to understand his anonymity and the presentation of the material are equal parts of the big picture. You encounter something unfamiliar and distinct in each of the songs, and their arrangement and presentation plays with your sanity the farther you travel their desolate territory. Concerning the name of the project I keep thinking of “Lord of the Flies” since something about the bottomless production could carry you to a primal state of mind not unlike that described in the novel. Heavy magazine compared it to the writings of Lovecraft and I can see those similarities. I’m most strongly reminded of an experimental noise band from Long Island, New York known as Controlled Bleeding. In some ways this album sounds like what Controlled Bleeding would be if they came back as an extreme metal band. The intro track “sceimble” suggests malevolence lurking over the horizon, a great beast bellowing welcome from a distance. You can’t see it; you just get an impression of something massive. I take this as being deliberately vague; you’re not meant to see it as much as meant to feel it in your bones. This accounts for production depicting disjointed images under miles of murky water as the album continues. Albums that are memorable often come from the stark imagination of a lone musician, and Beastial Piglord creates eerie, unnerving soundscapes that leave imprints on you conscious and subconscious mind whether or not you’re prepared for them. To appreciate all the overt and subtle nuances of this album you have to have a mind as broad as the universe. -Dave Wolff

Lineup:
Hudson: All vocals and instruments

Track list:
1. sceimhle
2. silq
3. ethos
4. grisim domum
5. squamous
6. eldritch
7. ento fetor
8. seance


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