Between all the many different styles that metal has created and touted over the years, it’s easily the creation known as grind and all of its spawns that I’ve had the most troubling becoming accustomed to in my time of exploring the vast reaches of the genre. Pig Destroyer was possibly the first band of the kind that I had ever heard of and investigation via referral from a friend in high school, and they weren’t my taste then. Nowadays, they’re still not quite my thing, but it’s with works like “The Octagonal Stairway” that I find myself more mesmerized by this band than ever before.

What still astounds me as not just this band but the style as a whole is just how visceral and raw it all seems to be without even seeming like it’s born from a real-life foundation at times. Everything Pig Destroyer has ever done has been something mind-bending of a unique kind, and that trend only continues with “The Octagonal Stairway” in a way that I just could not wretch myself away from. Just barely over 25 minutes, Pig Destroyer does what they do best: throw every punch with full force and not pull a single one. It’s just six tracks and only one of them stretches over four minutes in length – that one in particular boasting over 11 minutes – but, as you would normally expect from the world of grind, it all goes by both so quickly but so slowly as you try to absorb every single morsel that the band is throwing your way, and “The Octagonal Stairway” is nothing if that absolutely bloated by delicious morsels to chew on. Blistering ferocity on top of unparalleled malice that cannot be quenched is what’s to be found within this flesh-hungry EP, but that’s just not all that happens here as “simple” as it might sound. The aforementioned 11-minute finale that is “Sound Walker” is by far the most unique piece that I’ve seen this band do, and it’s a completely out of left field experience that I wasn’t expecting in any capacity. The very name of the song is more than fitting, and there are very few words that I can use to accurately describe it as anything other than an aural assault that feels like it has no end as it continuously pulls you in further to its depths more than one could’ve expected.

It really makes “The Octagonal Stairway” a perplexing work in more ways than one, and I feel very confident in saying that of all the Pig Destroyer material that I’ve heard up to now, this is the one that I’ll definitely find myself coming back to. This is just one EP in a catalog of boundless chaos, and it’s after listening to this small but inviting work that I now, admittedly, have an itch to listen to its predecessors.

“The Octagonal Stairway” releases on August 28th via Relapse Records!

PRE-ORDER “The Octagonal Stairway” via multiple sources here.

LISTEN to singles from “The Octagonal Stairway” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Pig Destroyer on Facebook here.