Metropolis Records – 27th September 2024
Christopher Nosnibor
Hot on the sweaty trotters of Red Room, released in May, the Lord of Lard, Raymond Watts has managed to mine fresh truffles for a whole new EP ahead of embarking on an extensive tour of the US, which so happens to take its name from the first track on said EP, ‘Heroin for the Damned’. The fact that this isn’t a set of remixes
The title alone is glorious, and you can almost feel the relish with which Watts conjured up the phrase, wicked, perverse, dark, and equally ostentatious and grand, evoking an image within the realms of The Last Supper but with an S&M slant as the participants dine on an orgy of gore… or something. When it comes to relishing the richness of language and delighting in deliciously devilish wordplay and alliteration, sifting through PIG’s catalogue for titles and lyrics (there’s a suitably extravagant book containing all of them just out) provides abundant evidence that Watts really gets kicks from it.
It’s also clear he is absolutely loving the whole self-styled industrial rock-god posturing, hamming it up in leather and mesh, and simply the whole music-making thing, perhaps more than at any point in his career. Instead of being awkward about self-promotion, he’s fully embracing its absurdity, and in a genre that’s largely dominated by serious, angry people, PIG stand out as being rather less po-faced, and altogether more fun than your average industrial act. I’m not sure I’ve seen Al Jourgensen or Trent Reznor posting pics on Facebook hugging their pooches.
That doesn’t mean that the music is any less serious. Watts and his various collaborators really know how to bring a crunching riff and a stonking beat, and, occasionally, having taken early cues from the legendary JG Thirlwell, spin in some bombastic strings and grand orchestral strikes. And Feast of Agony is dark, heavy, intense, and marks a strong return to the more experimental 90s work following a pursuit of an altogether glammier sound of late.
‘Heroin for the Damned’ – the opium of the people for the 21st Century, perhaps – starts low, slow, and sinister, Watts’ vocal a croak amidst a dank electronic swamp before a steady riff, laden with grit, grinds in, rubbing hard against a lowdown pulsating synth groove. It’s a bit NIN circa The Downward Spiral, but equally it’s quintessentially 90s PIG, and lands a monster chorus that combines the raging roar of Sinsation and the grainy grooves of Praise the Lard with gushing gospel grandeur – something that really dominates the final track, the Jim Davies remix of ‘Baptise, Bless, Bleed.’ Piano and bold orchestral sweeps meld with stark synths and crunching guitars on ‘Fallout’, before Watts comes on like Bowie on the slow-paced anthemic ‘Comedown’, while the verses of ‘Hand of Mercy’ owe more to Prince.
It’s a PIG release and therefore it’s a pure [serial killer] thriller, alright – but even within the now-expansive catalogue, Feast of Agony is a strong entry.
AA
Aural Aggravation 