Dishing out 2015’s best range of fucked up bass tones are Brooklyn natives PIGS (looks better in caps). Noise rock for the riff and doom inclined, these guys have the right idea about music; it sounds best when you play it on record just like you would at the local club. PIGS dabble in the kind of debased, drop tuned goodness that fills a room with danger, sweat and probably some of the devil’s lettuce. Their latest two lengths could scratch an itch you might not have known you had. Over the jump to play riffs and raise horns.
Members of Unsane et al. have conspired to blow me away. If you’ve listened to anything yet, you’ll hear where I’m coming from regards those bass tones. Utilising a pedal board that must represent every colour in the multiverse, between them the guitars and bass alike rip through truly diabolical riffs. The alarm tone guitar in “Wrap It Up” that cut through the grime must be generated by nightmares ‘cuz I can still hear it.What riffs too! My favourite string snappers come out of nowhere and slam back in a minute down the line, jarring enough to regain the attention of anyone changed into idle.
PIGS, on Wronger in particular, find a blend of lumbering pace and barely contained eruption that I can only think of witnessing in the single digits. The bite and cut of longer tracks remains when other might limp off feigning injury. Not for the first time this year too, I have found an album with vocals that were as moving as a shot of lighter fluid endorsed by Lemmy and Mike Patton. Seriously grimey, creative bellowing. Jacked up right next to the nastiness of the fuzz, some truly demonic sounds are gonna ring in the ear right next to that fucking buzzsaw alarm.
Wronger is out now on Solar Flare Records. Geddit good. Also get their last spin You Ruin Everything because it’s so brilliantly titled for the lashings of abuse it dishes out. I’m willing to get over the fucking clowns on the artwork. Seriously, fuck clowns.
-MM