PIG: ‘Red Room’ – new album by industrial rock act helmed by head hog Raymond Watts out 17.05.24 (Metropolis Records) | includes ‘Crumbs Chaos & Lies’ single out today
new album
LP | CD | digital
out 17.05.24
(Metropolis Records)
Bandcamp pre-order | digital pre-save/add
includes the single
CRUMBS CHAOS & LIES
out 01.05.24
stream | video
Raymond Watts aka PIG has enjoyed a stellar career since starting out as a pioneering member of the mid-1980s industrial rock scene. As well as releasing fourteen albums as PIG, he has toured with KMFDM (he was a member of the band in their early days), Nine Inch Nails and Einstürzende Neubauten, written music for fashion and film for Chloe, Marios Schwab, Halston, The Row, as well as creating the sound design for the exhibition ‘Punk: Chaos to Couture’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Watts also collaborated with the late fashion icon Alexander McQueen, who commissioned him (with John Gosling) to embellish the serene instrumental track ‘Inside’ (from the 1999 PIG album ‘Genuine American Monster’ album) for the soundtrack to ‘Plato’s Atlantis’. The show was reprised after McQueen’s untimely death in as the finale of ‘Savage Beauty’, a posthumous retrospective that broke all records at both The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
‘Red Room’ is the follow-up to 2022’s ‘The Merciless Light’ and is the sound of Watts beating the hammer of hope on the anvil of despair. However, far from being the dying light of decay, it is rather a spark and an ember, a torch in transition lighting up the house of PIG before Watts burns it up and blows it down, cutting through the scaly rind of PIG to the tender heart and the soft underbelly of the boar.
Watts has co-written much of ‘Red Room’ with Jim Davies, a longtime member of Pitchshifter but best known for his acidic and acerbic guitar lines on many chart hits by The Prodigy. Several regular cohorts are also present and correct, along with some new additions most majestically heard on ‘Dum Dum Bullet’ as the PIG choir: Emily Kavanaugh (Night Club), Chris Hall (Stabbing Westward), Burton C Bell (Fear Factory, Ascension of the Watchers), I Ya Toyah, Chris Connelly (Revolting Cocks, Ministry), En Esch (KMFDM) and Marc Heal (Cubanate) are among those featured.
Thunderous introductory single ‘Crumbs Chaos & Lies’ sees an appearance by Alexis Mincolla (3Teeth) and is accompanied by a video made by the elusive visionary Ibex. Watts says of the song: “I like to wrap the poison sweets in the finest treats and envisioned this as the sound of PIG officiating at my own funeral.”
Elsewhere, Chris Hall delivers a soaring vocal performance on ‘The Sick Man’s Prayer’, Watts’ old KMFDM bandmate Günther Schulz (aka ‘The Czar of Guitar’ with his ability to flesh out and flay a PIG song while simultaneously licking its wounds) appears on the anthemic ‘Dirty Mercy’, while the great jazz trumpeter Enrico Tomasso (who has worked on and off with Watts for three decades) brings his deft and delicate touch to ‘PIG Is At The Window’.
‘Red Room’ is truly the word of the Lard, as well as being art for the heart and badassery of the highest order. Bathe in the brutal beauty of PIG and get a scrubbing you’ll never forget.
RED ROOM
TRACKLISTING
1 Crumbs Chaos & Lies 4:39
2 Red Room 4:08
3 Dum Dum Bullet 5:33
4 Does It Hurt Yet 4:10
5 Trash Temple 3:31
6 Slave To Pleasure 3:57
7 The Sick Man’s Prayer 3:44
8 Six Eye Sand Spider 5:10
9 Dirty Mercy 3:51
10 PIG Is At The Window 4:29
11 Body Count 3:55
12 False Flag 3:00
