Five albums in for the five-pronged psych rockers and that, by my maths, has them crying “Wee! Wee! Wee!” all the way home. But they haven’t done that. If anything they’ve pushed further afield than ever before, enlisting legendary producer, rapper, and one half of Run The Jewels (El-P) for an eviscerating verse on Death Hilarious’s centre-piece ‘Glib Tongued’.
Bringing together the Def Jux man’s icy pen and instantly recognisable flow with a riff that bassist John-Michael Hedley had been playing with for a couple of years has resulted in arguably the most overtly political statement of Pigs’ career. It’s a hulking beast of chugged rhythms and swirling guitars stomping along a road littered with waved flags, dragged bodies, and rose-tinted glasses that fail to correct the shortsighted perspective of conservative nationalism. The bellow of “Necromance” from vocalist Matt Baty adding to the track’s irresistible death drive.
Lyrically, Baty takes us down some interesting paths. He’s embodying characters that range from prurient eavesdroppers (‘Detroit’), through the nihilistic downer of ‘Collider’, to the album’s finale ‘Toecurler’ with its Dostoyevskian double merging into one. That last track forming a sort of titular trilogy with ‘Thumbsucker’ (King of Cowards) and ‘Rubbernecker’ (Viscerals).
The opening of that closer is pure slow, Sabbathian riffage. It feels lazy to still be referencing the Brummies formerly known as Earth (not that one, but not far off), but Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs’ Iommi worship remains ever present. There’s always been more to them than mere tribute, however, and when they’re at their ball-busting propulsive best – as on tracks like ‘Blockage’ and ‘Stitches’, where they rumble along like a tardy “guzzoline” tanker escaping Mad Max hordes under a hail of riffs, picking dazzling six string leads out of the low-end murk – they feel closer to Motörhead with the Hawkwind beneath their wings. Maybe Pigs can fly.
It’s only when they deviate from this infectious forward impetus that they feel a little pedestrian. The Sleep-aping ‘Carousel’, whilst perfectly serviceable, gives the appearance of having taken their foot off the gas. Similarly, ‘Collider’s lurching cadence seems to drag a little too slowly before its scuttled drums and over-emphasised blurt of “Huhhhhhhhh” slaps a big grin on your face.
Paradoxically ‘Detroit’s mid-track cutback to half speed sludge, with its insinuations of a long, hot, sweaty yet unsated night, provides the sort of spacious relief that helps to accentuate the thrust of other tracks. For example, the exhilarating tempest that is ‘The Wyrm’ being beat on by battered drums, or the breakneck charge at maximum disregard for their selves on ‘Coyote Call’.
Propulsive rhythm and vocals riding on the back of stratosphere-troubling guitars are the bread and butter that elevate a Pigs live show. It’s what lifts the baying throng into crowd-surfing and stage invading antics. You get the sense that you can get on board with this sounder of hogs or get left by the wayside. Or, as El-P so succinctly puts it “Under the shade of Oakley glasses there’s no eye for eye. Freedom of choice, you can be ruled or you can fucking die”
