With less alarm and greater eagerness we seize the third full-length album by Milwaukee-based war metal moniker Pig’s Blood, whose first two drops of venom I absorbed with foolish confidence. Seven years after the release of A Flock Slaughtered, and after a sensible transfer to the ghastly carriage of Dark Descent Records, the band’s imposed brutality presents itself with a refined sound, and a constant pressure of blackened death that never ceases to shock. Destroying the Spirit doesn’t shy away from the usual constant bashing and blasphemy, while also now harnessing an attenuated conception of buoyancy across its 33 minutes of duration that boosts the outcome above the genre's bar of mediocrity.
The first and most notable aspect on the album is the sharpened production, which is less clouded than in previous works, and yet not at the expense of heaviness. A tightly mastered sound offers the instruments discernible space, it’s audible and binds everything into notable cohesion, finally exposing all the grisly tools of the band openly to the listener. Destroying the Spirit's core still remains what is expected from Pig's Blood: the band operates on all speeds as guitars, drums and vocals erupt and spill molten phrases that violently march with clear delineation in the liminal zone between old-school death and black metal.
The tracks on Destroying the Spirit are immediate but deceptive, as the small rhythmic changes and recurring patterns indicate an exquisite compositional grasp on war metal. “Rabid Dogs” and “Satanic Hammer of Justice” lean the strongest into that direction and praising the corpses of Archgoat, while there’s an odor of Incantation everywhere, especially e.g. in the main riffs and transitory soloing of “Power to Stop It”, or the opener “Standing In Depravity”. Nothing but pure delight is to be experienced when listening to the bestial madness of tracks like “Tartarean Infection” and even more so “Ravenous Hellslaught”, which also has a Profanatica flavor in its logic of scale riffing that always delivers.
Same goes for the opening lines of one of the Destroying the Spirit’s standouts, “Aftermath”, which draws from all the aforementioned and also features well-implemented higher-pitched howls, unlike the orkish growling that takes place for the most part of the album. You’ll find the same vocal terror on the convulsive closing piece, “Strikeforce of Isolate Will”, where the band finishes things off with an epic blast. Across the record, strains of blackened thrash (for example, in the middle part of the title track) can also be picked up, and there’s a fixed feel of forward momentum akin to early Deicide, but through a considerably more blackened lens and militaristic cadence.
Ultimately, the tenets of the genre are not reinvented, but with Destroying the Spirit, the grip is certainly tightened. Pig's Blood remain ruthless, the desecration is controlled and happens in broad daylight. The album is offered for repeated listens, seeks to overwhelm with precision and brute force, resonating with the savage legacy of old assailants from Blasphemy to Order From Chaos. I found its clarity to be a big advantage in appreciating the new material and its impact, hinting how the band can manage just fine based on musical merit alone. The spirit has been destroyed.
Release: April 24th, 2026 | Dark Descent RecordsRating: 4 out of 5
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