#6: SCOTT HULL (PIG DESTROYER, AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED)

May 27th, 2011 at 2:00pm
Axl Rosenberg

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MetalSucks recently polled its staff to determine who are The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, and after an incredible amount of arguing, name calling, and physical violence, we have finalized that list! The only requirements to be eligible for the list were that the musician in question had to a) play metal (duh), b) play guitar (double-duh), and c) have recorded something in the past five years. Today we continue our countdown with Scott Hull of Pig Destroyer and Agoraphobic Nosebleed…

Scott Hull might be the genre’s most verisimilitudinous exmaple of metal, for, surely, there is no one more metal than he. He has a job, so he isn’t dependent on music to make his living, so he has never had to commit that sin which most offends metal fans — the compromise of artistic ideals. And that job just happens to be doing IT stuff for the government, which might not sound interesting, until you hear Hull use the phrase “The classified nature of my work,” at which point you realize that Holy shit Scott Hull knows where you live and what porn you download and the codes for the bombs and you had better not fuck with him.

Of course, while these two facts certainly add to Hull’s metalness, they are far too superficial to be the actual source of his metalocity. For no one would give a hoot about Scott Hull the Government IT Guy who Makes Music on the Side if not for the fact that his guitar playing has the ability to endanger entire species.

The guy is just a riff factory, churning out a seemingly endless parade ear-fuckery. But it’s not just what Hull plays, but also how he plays it, that has made the guy such an icon. He employs eight string guitars to monstrous effect, and his ability to sound perpetually unhinged, filthy, and evil is what gives all of his music its menace — and if you ever wanna see fear in a square’s eyes, play the poor putz some PxDx. Various forms of punk, speed, and death metal all converge in the tips of Hull’s fingers, spilling out as pretty much the best grindcore and powerviolence currently being created anywhere on the planet.

In fact, sometimes I think Hull doesn’t get enough credit for the variety of genres he has mastered; I mean, half the fun of listening to a PxDx or ANb song is how schizophrenic they are, and how many different styles they incorporate, and how well those styles are incorporated. Pig Destroyer’s 37-minutes-plus epic “Natasha” seems to have opened people’s eyes a bit, but more Hull fans need to get down with Requiem, the score he composed for a movie that never actually got made.

The bottom line is, everything Hull gets involved with ends up being really, really special and thought-provoking. Here’s hoping that being the James Bond of the IT world never pulls him away from metal for too long.

-AR

THE LIST SO FAR

#7 — Jeff Loomis

#8 — A.J. Minette (The Human Abstract)

#9 — John Petrucci (Dream Theater)

#10 — Terrance Hobbs (Suffocation)

#11 – Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth)

#12 — Michael Keene (The Faceless)

#13 — Ben Weinman (The Dillinger Escape Plan)

#14 – Emil Werstler (Dååth, Levi/Werstler)

#15 — Colin Marston (Krallice, Behold… The Arctopus)

#16 — Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains)