PIG: Pigmata
Details/Trivia:
This is a re-issue of the Watts album "Pigmartyr", which was intended to be released as Pig before a last minute change to release it under the name Watts. The album was not mastered before it was released on Grand Recordings and the suffered. Upon re-release under Pig by Metropolis, the tracks were remastered by Isaac Glendening of Cesium:137, the album was renamed to "Pigmata" and three new songs were added. Additionally, album and CD booklet artwork and photography by longtime Pig collaborator Stephen Lovell-Davis was included.
Versions
| Cat no. | Date | Format | Company | Status | Cover |
MET397 | November 8, 2005 | Compact Disc | Metropolis (US) | In Print | |
Reviews/Blurbs
Release Music Magazine:
“I’ve toured, whored, been ignored”. “On the Slaughterfront” is not only so demonic that it sounds like muzak for the lobbies of hell. It also appears to be a demented self biography of sorts, and as such possibly a way for Raymond Watts to come to terms with the fractured nature of his long musical career and the perverted Pig persona he adopted in 1988.
“Pigmata” is a sort of belated mutant twin to last year’s “Pigmartyr”, retaining the ten tracks of that album but polishing up the rough production significantly, as well as adding three brand new bonus tracks. The album also marks the return of Pig, in many ways.
“Pigmartyr” was released under the moniker Watts, and was seemingly intended to be Watts’ way of breaking through to a bigger audience. Due to the apparent incompetence of his label at the time, the big break never arrived. But as such the album was low on the twisted inspiration that’s been the trademark of most Pig releases, and a frustratingly conventional sounding industrial rock album; big on loud guitar riffs and scatological puns, but lacking in the department of the perversely polymorphous musical crossbreeding Pig fans have come to love and crave.
The touching up of the “Pigmartyr” material that’s taken place here can’t rescue the songs from sounding a tad too generic, but at least the new sheen manages to bring them to life in a new way. And there’s certainly nothing wrong in the songwriting department – quite a few of the songs are catchy little rock monsters, with standout tracks being “Suck Spit Shit”, “Situation” and the wonderfully sleazy “Take”. Meanwhile, “Kundalini” takes joy in juxtaposing a melancholy beauty with musings about “the secret life of your labia” and “designer vaginas”. Which, of course, is the pleasure one wants from a Pig song.
But the proper return of the Pig I want to see in my poke doesn’t arrive until the end of the album. The three bonus tracks take things in an altogether more exciting direction. “God Rod” filches the verse from Schwein track “Crown”, but turns completely on itself as it breaks out into a chorus of “mattress mambo” and “torture tango”, rendering it as schizophrenic as anything from Pig pinnacle “Praise the Lard”. The aforementioned “On the Slaughterfront” is a jazzy, mutant jukejoint beast, which is so soaked in bile, self loathing and grotesque, pitch black humour that it’s difficult not to see it as a reaction against the outcome of the Watts project. Marked by a morbid death drive it may be, but hopefully it also signals a full return to more adventurous ground as well as the coming of more Pig material.
- Kristoffer Nhoeden, Release Music Magazine
JIVEMagazine:
Just when it looked as though the techno/industrial world was about to abandon all of its progress and slap an "80s or Bust" sticker on its bumper, along comes Pig with a well-targeted stab at dark, menacing and danceable industrial. Truth be told, there is indeed an 80s element at work here, but only if you count the timeless, future-minded (and bedbug-crazy) Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell as a typical example of Reagan-era soundscape (despite the fact, by the by, that he's experimenting nowadays with everything from French coffee-shop to Esther Williams water-ballet weirdness).
In any case, "Pigmata" is a vital thesis, not only for the black-is-the-new-black goth crowd but also your garden-variety fan of psycho-wave freakouts like Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, Acumen Nation and so forth. As far as that goes, Pig's main cog, Raymond Watts, makes no effort to hide the fact he's been exposed to metal; the guitar sound herein evokes Metallica as opposed to the somewhat generic sound found on most action-hero EBM releases these days.
Poking its ratty head out of the album's sinister underbrush as the hands-down standout track is "Here To Stay," a Rob Zombie-like rumbler with a chorus that plays like the Sopranos theme disassembled for use by P.O.D. -- you wont be able to get it out of your head without using an ice pick.
JIVE Magazine Rating: 5 out of 5
-Eric Saeger, JIVEMagazine
Splendid Magazine:
Poor Raymond Watts. After years of performing as Pig, he decided to make a fresh start -- so he rechristened himself Watts (it's his name, after all), delivered a shiny new record to UK imprint Grand Recordings, and (presumably) watched in horror as Grand made like an economic Titanic, vanishing into the depths of bankrupty with the album, Pigmartyr, trapped in its icy embrace. And then, as so many of us do in times of crisis, Watts fell back on a familiar routine: he reclaimed his Pig identity, altered the record enough to satisfy copyright law (new master by Cesium_137's Isaac Glendenning, new title, fresh artwork, additional tracks), and flogged it to Metropolis. It's a good thing he did, too; Pigmata isn't much different from the rest of the Pig canon, but very few artists do industrial bombast as well as Ray Watts.
Although Watts is best known as a founding member of KMFDM, his resume includes work with so many big names -- Psychic TV, Einstürzende Neubauten, Foetus -- that he's only a Chris and Cosey remix and a Bill Leeb collaboration away from mandatory induction into the Industrial Hall of Fame. His work as Pig distills those influences into a noxious cocktail of sleaze and random violence, channeling Jim Thirlwell's guttural, knuckle-dragging alter ego (see "On the Slaughterfront", "Stage Slut" and, frankly, most of his other songs), tapping into latter-day Psychic TV's chilly house/disco nightmare collage vibe when it suits him (in Pigmata's case, "Kundalini"), and imbuing everything he touches with a measure of Neubauten's speaker-trashing, found percussion-battering ferocity. If you've heard those artists and sampled a few of the better KMFDM records, you'll know exactly what to expect from Pigmata: shredding guitars, Wagnerian orchestral pomp, acidic synth accents, heavy beats, stentorian Neanderthal vocals and an ominous, palpable anger. And let's be clear -- we're not talking about the anger that skinny, tight t-shirt-clad graphic designers funnel into whiny pussy-ass rock songs months after the fact. Watts's fury is the old-school shit favored by cigar-chomping generals, classic Marvel superheroes and underemployed alcoholic dads. It isn't pretty. Fortunately, when Watts needs pretty, he demonstrates a surprisingly focused aptitude for pop-friendly flair. "Here to Stay"'s KMFDM-style male/female vocals and chugging riffs are underscored by an irresistible pop-psych bass line, while "Kundalini"s chilly samples, retro-industrial keyboards and sandpapery IDM beats draw an extra shot of warmth from the chorus's silky-smooth Peter Hook-derived slide bass riff. "God Rod"'s seething, beetle-browed misogyny and cliché-crazed lyrics (you'll actually hear "Young, dumb and full of cum" more times here than most people do in their entire lives) are subverted by jittery Latinesque percussion and enough horn stabs and brass punches to rouse your inner choreographer.
In the end, of course, it's another Pig record, designed to appeal to the same part of the male mind ('cos who are we kidding here? Watts won't be playing two nights at Mount Holyoke next time he crosses the US) that makes men fix up old muscle cars, order 64-ounce Porterhouse steaks and date strippers named Nikki and Lexxxi. It's the lure of the obvious -- the wanton sensory pleasures of the lowest common denominator. In other words, Pigmata is what you listen to when you let the little head choose the music.
- George Zahora, Splendid Magazine
Liner Notes
Artwork By [Design] - Stephen Lovell-Davis
Backing Vocals - Arianne Schreiber
Bass, Programmed By, Recorded By - Eden*
Drums - Andy Selway
Guitar - Joolz Hodgeson*
Guitar [Additional] - Jules Cooper
Guitar, Programmed By - Steve White
Guitar, Programmed By, Recorded By, Vocals - Raymond Watts
Mastered By - Isaac Glendening
Mixed By - Eden* , Raymond Watts
Photography - Stephen Lovell-Davis
Producer - Eden* , Raymond Watts
Recorded at Ranch Apocalypse, London.
Additional recording at Punish Studios and Pigsty, Seattle.
Mastered at Subversive Sound, Drexel Hill.