Posts Tagged ‘Pigs x7’

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs / Meryl Streek – The Crescent Community Centre, York, 14th May 2026

Posted: 15 May 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Once again, I’ve returned to my home from witnessing fantastic acts performing live with a few photos, and barely any notes. This is what happens when the bands are so good you just spend the entire set, transfixed, and when between acts, when you might otherwise capture a few thoughts, you see people you know, and in between a piss and a fresh pint, the time’s gone. I can’t complain about any of this, of course, and I’m not going to. Because this summarises everything that’s great about going to see live music in grassroots venues – not just seeing great bands in close proximity and being able to afford not only a pint, but more than one (you can buy two decent hand-pulled pints of local / regional beer here for the price of a single pint of mass-produced stuff at The Barbican or Leeds O2), but running into familiar faces and being part of a community of people who support live music and are properly into going to see bands.

I’m writing this up now having just seen that The Crescent in York has been named by Time Out as one of the 42 greatest independent venues in the UK, making the Top 10, no less, sharing a bracket with the likes of The Brudenell, Café Oto, and Glasgow Barrowlands. And the more I reflect, the more I feel it’s more than deserved. It really is that good, in that it has everything you could possibly want from an independent gig venue – and tonight is exemplary. It’s sold out, and the bar’s packed a good half an hour before doors, plus there’s a queue, meaning it’s filled up nicely by the time Meryl Streek takes the stage at 8.

Meryl Streek is a revelation, and a world away from Pigs stylistically, sonically, in terms of performance… and this is a strong positive. For one man with a backing track, he sure does a good job of making up for the absence of a band, constantly pacing back and forth with a frenetic, kinetic, nervous energy. The set is strewn with samples and recordings of news items, predominantly about suicide and murder, prefacing or integrated within songs on the same. Real people are the subjects, and he pours heart and soul into every word. The vocal style is not exactly rapping, and certainly not singing, but essentially agitated ranting over electronic-based tracks with sturdy bass and booming beats. At times it’s near disco, others quite abrasive noise. He apologises for the content, and for – well, I’m not quite sure what for. The crowd’s behind him (even when he’s off the stage and in the middle of them, if you see what I mean) and deservedly so. Musically entertaining, lyrically harrowing, it’s a strong set.

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Meryl Streek

AC/DC’s ‘For Those About to Rock’ is played in full as an intro before Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – or Pigs x 7 as they tend to be more commonly referred to, for obvious reasons – take to the stage. It’s an apposite choice: we are indeed, about to fucking rock.

Their back line is immense. The sound is beyond immense, and they blast out riff after riff after riff. They roll up all of the best of riff monsters and chuck in some space rock for good measure, resulting in a glorious hybrid of Sabbath, Mötörhead, and Hawkwind. And while on the face of it, there’s nothing unique on offer, when it comes to riffs, size matters, and these guys do riffs on a truly galactic scale. The delivery really makes it, though. The bass and drums are locked in tight, and the two guitarists swap effortlessly between lead and rhythm parts, sometimes both playing both.

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Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs

Matt Baty, in shorts and vest, dripping with sweat (and the copious water he pours over himself) adopts a stance like Henry Rollins as he hollers into a vortex of reverb. But given his build, and tendency to bounce lightfootedly and strike random poses, it’s more like watching Barry McGuigan doing Freddie Mercury on Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes. They’re a band who clearly don’t take themselves too seriously, and every three or four songs – hammered out back to back – there’s a pause for breath, during which he relays a tale in three or four parts which is more or less about the fact that they’ve never been invited to play Download Festival (cue pantomime booing and hissing from the crowd). This is very much Download’s loss. There’s also a reference to ‘The hardest man in Billingham’ – which happens to be a song by fellow northeasters IRKED, who we welcomed to York only last week. There’s some good stuff happening up there right now, and it’s great that we get to share in this. In fact, despite the fact that the world is insane and there’s war everywhere, the cost of living is crippling, and pubs and venues are closing at an alarming rate, this is a good time for new music.

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Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs

As they’re touring to promote their (fairly) recently-released fifth album, it stands to reason that the set should focus on that, opening with ‘The Wyrm’ and playing pretty much the album in its entirety, with occasional delves into the back-catalogue, with ‘Big Rig’, ‘Mr Medicine’ and ‘Ultimate Hammer’ from Land of Sleeper also making an appearance and ‘GNT’ from 2018’s King of Cowards being the oldest song in the set. No-one’s beefing about the setlist: the new album is a corker and live, they slay from start to finish. Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs = Riffs Riffs Riffs Riffs Riffs Riffs Riffs, and tonight’s show was an absolute rip-snorter.

worriedaboutsatan – Providence

Posted: 23 May 2021 in Albums
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Box Records – 7th May 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

Gavin Miller’s hardly been slacking of late: in fact, it turns out I’ve been struggling to keep pace with his output this last year or so. While for many, time seems to have stalled since the sequence of lockdowns began some fourteen months ago, Miller’s had his foot firmly on the accelerator, expanding the already extensive worriedaboutsatan catalogue with five new releases, including an archival excavation (appropriately titled The Vault) and an expanded reissue of the Europa EP, and a split release with Capac, all of which followed a brand-new LP, in the form of Time Lapse.

This latest effort, releases on Box Records, run by Matt Beatty of Pigs x7, arrives almost a year to the day after Time Lapse, and is in many respects of the period since its predecessor was recorded, a period which has been both eventful and uneventful at the same time.

The liner notes detail Miller’s objective in piecing together the album as follows: ‘Resisting the urge to simply turn in more longform experiments in expansive post-rock informed electronica, Providence seeks to capture several different elements of the ‘satan sound, whilst attempting to thread it together into one cohesive whole.’

There has been a certain sense of linearity to the majority of previous ‘satan releases, although that sense of trajectory has, for me, always been most defined in the live sets, and the challenge here is very much how does one provide a sense of flow, of linearity, or narrative, of continuity; to what is, in many ways, a drifting desert of time, punctuated by so very little?

Since the departure of Thomas Ragsdale, at which point worriedaboutsatan again became Gain solo, the beat and bass elements of the sound have much more subdued, and sonically, Providence is very much classic Miller: rich ambient tones with subtle undercurrents that allude to post-rock and glitchtronica, and on paper, it probably doesn’t sound all that remarkable – although perhaps what is remarkable is that worrriedaboutstan started carving this nice back in 2006, before it became commonplace, making was trailblazers the world has gradually caught up with.

‘Stück Für Stück’ shimmers, rippling notes cascading delicately down like droplets of spring rain while a subdued, almost subliminal beat and bassline pule in the background, and ‘Für Immer’ finds Miller return to German for the track’s title – and perhaps some clues as to the narrative lie in the titles of the tracks. ‘Für Immer’ shares no obvious connections to the 1982 DAF album of the same title, but perhaps hints at the sense of eternity that pervades Miller’s work, not least of all as reflected in the name of his label, This is it Forever. It may be creative reading, it may be the enactment of reception theory or even projection on my part, but some of the track’s resonance lies in the sense that the soft ambience, directionless, lacking overt form, encapsulates the drifting emptiness of this span of disconnection, of aimlessness, of there being no end in sight, and the weak, powerless, listless, feeling is engenders, a sense reinforced by ‘On Your Own’, and all of the connotations of isolation and loneliness it carries.

Waves washing onto the shore splash through soft chimes on the short interlude that is ‘Everything is Fine’ (which I can’t help as read by turns as sarcastic and self-affirmation, but neither of which suggest that things truly are fine), while ‘Stop Calling My Phone’ is its antithetical scenario, and it’s a jabbing, petulant synth that dominates this track All or nothing: the desolate silence, or the bombardment of contact are both equally difficult to manage, and there rarely seems to be a happy medium.

If the nine-minute trance-inducing haze of ‘Stórar Franskar’ articulates the expansive drift of time and that sea of emptiness, then closer ‘Just to Feel Something’ is perhaps the companion to ‘Everything is Fine’, in that the numbness manifests as façade. Because everything is so empty, and so numb, and so absent, it’s difficult to retain focus, a sense of space, a sense of perspective.

Providence is the perfect soundtrack to those protracted spells of ponderance, that discomfort and dissatisfaction, the introspective reflection and self-doubt. It stands as a magnificent blank canvas into which to project and reflect. It’s also another strong addition to the worriedaboutsatan catalogue.

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