THE PRESS RELEASE: “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig” reasoned George Bernard Shaw. “You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” True to form, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have left the wiser of us aware that they are no band to be messed with. In the seven years since this band’s inception, the powerful primal charge at their heart has been amplified far beyond the realms of their original imagination. What’s more, no one has been more taken aback by this transformation than the band themselves. This upward trajectory has done nothing to make the Newcastle-based quintet complacent however, as they’ve used the cumulative force behind them as fuel for their most ambitious and hard-hitting record yet. Viscerals, their third proper, is an enormous leap forward in confidence, adventure and sheer intensity even from their 2018 breakthrough King Of Cowards. Incisive in its riff-driven attack, infectiously catchy in its songcraft and more intrepid than ever in its experimental approach, Viscerals is the sound of a leaner, more vicious Pigs, and one with their controls set way beyond the pulverising one-riff workouts of their early days.”
MY TWO CENTS: For some reason, I get a ton of metal albums sent to me — more than a dozen every week at least. And for the most part, they are either boringly predictable or downright shitty. Newcastle’s Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs are neither. Chiefly because they are both noisemakers and rulebreakers of the highest order. On their third full-blooded full-length Viscerals, their sound is once again rooted in a unique amalgam of familiar sounds and styles — the sludgy metagon riffage of Black Sabbath, the anthemic vocal bellowing of Killing Joke, the grim thunder-plod of doom, the rebellion of punk, the time-shifting intricacy of prog, the trippy flourishes of psychedelia, the cacophony of noise-rock and more. That they can meld all that into something even vaguely coherent and consistent is impressive on its own; what really puts them over the top is their ability to craft actual goddamn songs — as in memorable, original tunes with melodies and verses and choruses and hooks that sink their teeth in deep and don’t let go. If you’re a metal fan, you need to hear this one. As do most of the other metal bands who sent me their album this week.
