Listening Station: Pedro the Lion, D12, Pig Destroyer

Pedro the Lion

Achilles' Heel

Talk about your teases. Pedro the Lion's fourth full-length, Achilles' Heel, starts off with "Bands With Managers," and it's dreary not just for its slogging, lingering pace, but for the unrewarded anticipation that PTL visionary David Bazan might sonically lash out--just as he did on 2002's Control, the band's most engaging album. Nevertheless, it's still an emotionally sating number, Bazan eschewing his trademark, Eeyore-esque monotone delivery and attempting registers a notch or two higher (or even a falsetto here and there).

The Washington-based band's approach to Heel was to not have one; it would be a more natural, simpler approach to writing and recording songs. This is felt throughout the album, for it's not as cohesive or profound as the conceptual Control or 2000's Winners Never Quit. Though a few of the arrangements feel experimental--at least for Pedro--there's little that's distinctive or fresh here. If there are signs of maturity or growth for this nine-year-old act, it's that Bazan displays more clarity in the notes and words he employs. He is first and foremost a singer-songwriter, not a conventional rocker or indie noisemaker, and Heel best highlights that.

Most of the album moves along a midtempo beat, neither dragging nor driving Bazan and collaborator TW Walsh's articulate guitar melodies, and for these songs, that's a good thing. Bazan is in rare form lyrically; his humor has never been blacker, or his outlook bleaker. Furthermore, the Christian references have become less, um, reverent. In the aggressive "Foregone Conclusions," he offers, "You were too busy steering the conversation toward the Lord/ to hear the voice of the Spirit begging you to shut the fuck up." Bazan is clearly compelled to remark on many things weighing heavily on his mind, possibly with his specific audience in mind. Despite his focus and precise delivery, his wily observations and biting criticisms feel occasionally misguided. Earnestness will only get you so far, and for Pedro the Lion, it's time to take more liberties with the music and tone down some of the rhetoric.--Mike Prevatt

D12

World

Say it ain't so, Hi-Tek. Say it ain't so. After years of inspired collaborations with Mos Def, Talib Kweli and the rest of the Rawkus Records crew, the visionary beatmaker has finally hit rock bottom and tricked himself out on an Eminem record. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Still, Hi-Tek's decline should not come as any surprise to hip hop fans, who recently have seen the producer extraordinaire slip down the credibility slope from the Eastsidaz to Snoop Dogg to G-Unit. Yet his work with Bizarre--one of Eminem's five partners in D12--has to represent a new low in his storied career. A sample of the lyrics should cement the point: "All I can teach you, learn how to mack/ Smoke crack, smack a bitch when she talk back/ Matter of fact slap your sister, she's a slut" ("Just Like U"). Not even Andre 3000 magically imbued with the P-Funk power of George Clinton could put a gloss on that flow.

And the rest of the album follows along those lines. Although Bizarre and Hi-Tek give way to a parade of rappers and producers, the results run together in a 78-minute tapestry of guns, drugs, skeezers, pimps, hos, cribs and domestic violence. At best, it's a lateral move for Eminem, who hasn't really changed his shtick since 1999's Slim Shady LP. But where his first albums were balanced by a charming sense of false braggadocio, World gives the impression that Eminem has finally succumbed to his own hype. Years from now, music historians will struggle with this, the essential problem of Slim Shady. Was he really a disaffected outsider searching for artistic legitimacy in a post-industrial wasteland? Or was he simply a foolhardy white boy with a curious knack for obscene rhymes? World hints at the answer, and like Hi-Tek's future, it doesn't look good.--Newt Briggs

Pig Destroyer

Painter of Dead Girls

You wouldn't expect grindcore greats Pig Destroyer to do something so boutique as compiling on one slab all its songs that have appeared on split EPs, but blessed is the band that remembers that fan is short for fanatic. As albums go, Painter of Dead Girls isn't Pig Destroyer's most accessible work; compared with its surprisingly grooving grindcore masterpiece Prowler in the Yard, listening to this is like sticking your hand in a sausage grinder vs. a few lively nips from an errant weedwhacker. But for the brave--or depraved--at heart, Painter of Dead Girls satisfies with a pleasingly relentless barrage of blast-beats, inhuman barking and skeetering guitars that sound like they've been lovingly washed in pool acid; check out "Taskmaster" or "Blank Dice"--the latter with sheets of axe noise warped like funhouse mirrors--for an especially sweet piece of hell.

Painter isn't all bonesaws and blood, though; Pig Destoyer also throws in some hunks of sludge ("Rejection Fetish"), good old-fashioned backyard spazz-punk ("Fuck You Up and Get High") and no-nonsense metal stomp ("Dark Satellites"). It's worth a chuckle that, until track 16, the average song length is about 40 seconds; so Pig Destroyer's cover of "Down in the Streets" is a surprise twice over, not only for its length (3:45), but also for the band's raw yet respectful treatment of some classic Stooges. Closing with Helmet's "In the Meantime"--the original's polished guitar assault given PD's signature scrape--proves that while brevity might be the black soul of Pig Destroyer, these guys do respect their elders.--Andrew Kiraly