Alright, time for some hardcore. Not the punchy kicky whiny screamy kind, but the rip off your face and use it to polish rocks kind. While hardcore has never been my favorite genre or one of my particular expertise, the recent years have been kind. It seems like the masses caught on and that the slam dancing butt core of the mid 00’s was nothing more than an embarrassing fad. While there was the abundant amount of musical atrocities coming out at the time, some gems slipped through. I need only mention Converge and Jane Doe. Last year, California’s Nails really took me by surprise. Their ridiculously extreme take on the sound resulted in one of the most enjoyable grindy records I’d heard in a long while.

Cut from that same cloth comes All Pigs Must Die, a hardcore supergroup recently signed to Southern Lord Records consisting mostly of people I’ve never heard of. (Ben Koller from Converge plays drums though) What can I expect from a band that calls themselves All Pigs Must Die? Well, I would first of all expect this to be angry angry music. Second, I would expect some killer drums and guitar to fill it out. Throw in the occasional breakdown or solo and you’d have something that I could listen to for twenty minutes before getting my fill and moving on to something faggy like Dream Theater.

Lo and behold, what you see is what you get. APMD offer little in the way of surprises but make up for it by being steady and dependable in their sound. No matter which part of the record you turn to, you can rest assured that it will kick ass. There is little room for anything but, with the slowest moments still being crushingly heavy. This is music that rarely has any place being played through my computer speakers. This fits better as a quick speed fix while riding my bike or in what may be its most perfect setting, during a live show.

The only problem is that while even at thirty minutes, that much ass kicking loses its effects. My soft, tender, virgin behind can only take so much before the numbness kicks in. It is obvious there could have been more variation put to use. Sacrosanct is one of the few real standout tracks. While it offers you nothing you haven’t heard before, it does do it well. The riffs and meaty and the tempo is upbeat and really sets a nice groove in motion. Throw in a guitar solo and even a bass solo (there’s bass in hardcore music?) and you have yourself a nice clean cut track.

The title track God is War is one of those fun “breakdown for a whole song” kinda tunes. Luckily, with the inventive drumming and nice pacing it never comes off as that thing we hate. Instead, it comes off as a song that wouldn’t be out of place on a Converge album. And that might be the biggest fault of the album. While songs like The Blessed Void are insanely heavy and fast, I just can’t escape the feeling that I’d rather be listening to Converge. I’m sure that the band wants to distance themselves from that comparison as much as possible, but their sound isn’t helping. The songs themselves aren’t unique enough to put them on the level of Converge and the songs aren’t chaotic or heavy enough to contend with Nails. But in the end, that doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a good album. I won’t listen to it too often, but when I do it will always be when I need an excuse for a bangover.

If you don’t have those previously mentioned records, I highly recommend you grab those before this. But if you loved those and want something of the same caliber you could do a whole lot worse than All Pigs Must Die.