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Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs stormed Norwich Arts Centre with a head-banging sellout show on the back of fifth album Death Hilarious.
Newcastle’s Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs stormed Norwich Arts Centre with a head-banging sellout show on the back of fifth album Death Hilarious.
The night starts in unpredictable fashion with support from multi-genre music machine Hang Linton. The Leeds based artist brings an infectious energy to the stage with a big bag of effects, samples and kaleidoscopic mix of genres. He begins strumming distorted guitar over broken beats to accompany incongruously soulful singing like a one-man Massive Attack, but each song in the half hour set is as wildly different as the last. When he’s not on guitar he’s prancing the stage spitting lyrics, reciting bizarre performance poetry with backing tracks that bring to mind everything from Dizzee Rascal to Blur’s lo-fi post-grunge era. It is a far cry from the drums and metal the crowd was expecting but by the end of the set he is about 70% on the way to morphing into the headline act with a slow death metal finale with earth shaking bass. It’s a set without a dull moment from a passionate, innovative performer well worth discovering.
In contrast to the jack of all genres warm up act, Pigs x7 (to keep things short) have always had a sharp focus on the heavier end of the rock metal spectrum. Since roaring onto the scene nearly ten years ago with debut album Feed the Rats, the five-piece’s sound has only intensified, with their fifth offering Death Hilarious serving up an intoxicating mix of three-minute rock n roll thunderclaps and sprawling heavy riff-driven soundscapes. It is the latter that opens the show. The Wyrm, with its near hypnotic repetitive growl, is like the sonic equivalent of a staring contest where you know the band is never going to blink first. There is plenty of time for all the stragglers stuck at the bar to pile in before frontman Matthew Baty advances to the front of the stage, punching the air before bellowing the lyrics which seem to emanate from a bottomless pit.
The seven-minute opener feels like a full concert on its own but the band are just getting started. Without a pause, they launch into Mr Medicine from 2023’s Land of Sleeper. Usually there is little between songs but a distorted hum and a guitar riff slowing to a menacing tempo before the next wave of razor sharp chords, thundering precision drumming and echo drenched vocals engulfs the former church barely big enough to contain it. Death Hilarious dominates the set and sits well alongside choice cuts from their earlier work including GNT, Big Rig and World Crust.
When there are pauses to give musicians and audience time to get their breath back, Baty keeps the crowd entertained with banter veering into surreal standup. He recounts the band’s ongoing beef with a leading rock festival, boasts about having made more albums than The Venga Boys and introduces the band members with the names of 90s wrestlers and solo pop acts.
For nearly 90 minutes the heavy onslaught continues, culminating in the closing track from Death Hilarious, Toecurler. It’s another sprawling epic built around a groovy rock n roll riff that shifts and distorts in a venom drenched barrage that twists and swells before slowing and fading after about seven minutes then erupting once more in a rousing encore of itself. It’s the only encore of the night, the only one that’s needed as the band depart the hazy stage of thrumming amps having given their all. Europop blasts over the speakers and sweaty fans make their way out into the chill of an early autumn night.
