Pigsx7 have hardly got a reputation for penning tender and soulful ballads, but Death Hilarious is a particularly aggressive and punishing album even by their standards. Taking cues from Black Sabbath’s heft, Motorhead’s “bend not stab” sound and soul shaking noise rock, their new album is the aural equivalent of being mugged by a gang of feral kids and being left feeling particularly battered by the experience.
Starting as they mean to go on, opening track “Blockage” is a riotous barrage of speedy riffs and heavy beats punctuated by atonal guitar soloing that’s reminiscent of Black Flag’s Greg Ginn. “Detroit” is muscular and raw with Matt Baty preaching fire and brimstone and believably growling “I feel insane”, while “Collider” is a woozy punch-drunk thrash. It’s all stuff to keep the neighbours awake with the volume firmly staying at 11, especially the caustically irreverent recent single “Stitches”, which adds vicious Suicide-like synths to the unrelenting roar.
No less brutal is the industrial grind of “Glib Tongue”, which also includes an unexpected contribution from Run the Jewel’s rapper El-P, who lays down some blistering bars from the front line of an urban conflict zone in concert with Baty’s howling rabble rousing. However, it is the pulverising “Toecurler” that brings things to an end with a nod to the sound of the band’s debut album Feed the Rats. Here, Pigsx7 build from a sudden but powerful storm into an outrageous and particularly fierce tsunami of noise that is enough to carry anyone before it, as it burns down any last vestiges of order and sanity that they haven’t managed to banish already.
Death Hilarious is an unpolished but intoxicating brew, like an evening fuelled by several gallons of lethal, cloudy scrumpy – and is likely to give a similar headache through over exposure. But while it may be something of an acquired taste, it’s also quite capable of seducing those who thrive on such sonic maelstroms to go back for more. Again and again.
