Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Viscerals review

In a strange way the cover of their new album neatly encapsulates Pigs’ ethos: a pile of owner less innards sat on a Doric column topped by a fork speared eyeball, it’s pure Hammer House of Horror meeting Black Sabbath somewhere in the middle, a schlocky overload hailed from an era of naked virgins and Crowleyist chutzpah.

Anyone who wears this art on their sleeve is just as clearly very happy to send themselves up and on Crazy In Blood they’re obviously doing just that, necromancer-in-chief Matt Baty howling “Can we try any harder/There’s blood on the altar” over the quintet’s trademark mix of thunderous retro metal.

Having lurked in the underground for most of their seven ears, Viscerals predecessor King of Cowards brought the Newcastle based quintet and their mix of innards liquidising riffs, brooding lyrics and very contemporary paranoia out into the light of daytime radio and hip playlists. Does the follow up reek of sell out for the Tik Tok dollar? You can guess the answer.

There are what could be seen as concessions – opener Reducer and the bullet like Rubbernecker are relatively brief for an outfit which have made tracks scroll on for more than 15 minutes in the past – but Baty keeps it weird on the spoken word Blood And Butter and Halloween Bolson is a temple storming link to their previous work. The cover might suggest there are cartoon charachters on the inside, but Viscerals is gory, serious fun.

You can read the full view here.