Breakcore producer
Aaron Spectre's 2006 full-length debut as
Drumcorps paid tribute to his metal and hardcore roots, sampling bands like
Converge and
Cave In and mashing them up with his intense, precise jungle breakbeats and glitchy edits. The album was a breath of fresh air for both metal and electronic music, infusing the aggressive sounds with a sound system bass assault and distilling their fury into something truly powerful and exciting. While paying clear reverence to his source material, he didn't merely smack breakbeats under the songs and call it a day; he reshaped and restructured them, adding new breakdowns and rhythmic shifts. Even while the hard-hitting blastbeats provided a sense of instant gratification, there was still a sense of subtlety, with "Pig Destroyer Destroyer" building from a chopped-up, granulated marching band drum cadence worthy of the project's name, and the title track beginning with a slow, tense dubstep-inspired beat before going edit-crazy a few minutes later. The album perfectly encapsulated
Spectre's live show, where he effortlessly switched between laptop mixing and guitar shredding, and the album remains a stunning achievement, and easily one of the most successful style marriages of its kind. ~ Paul Simpson