Review Summary: PIG is back in great shape but minus the heaviness
Last year, Raymond Watts suddenly reappeared after over a decade of absence and fans rejoiced as they listened to his new collaborations The Compound Eye Sessions with Marc Heal and the Long in the Tooth Ep with Primitive Race.
A new PIG album was still to be heard of and the Lord of Lard had been absent for so long that any hope felt like folly. But The Gospel is now out and we can all listen to the divine word.
And well, it’s an excellent album.
Raymond Watts’ vocal delivery is here as impressive as it usually is, emotional, deep, varied and precise. It approaches hypnosis on songs like Satured, Diamond Sinners, Viva Evil or Toleration or Truth.
The music is, as expected from a PIG album, filled with its grating industrial noises and electronics, crooning grooves, bluesy melancholy and ominous snarls. Sadly, the heavy guitars have taken a huge step back making The Gospel PIG’s more accessible and melodic, no palm-muted semiquavers here.
The strength of the songwriting is at times striking, there’s virtually nothing to throw away here. Any noise, any synth line or beat is solid and used in the most efficient manner and the songs flow irresistibly, most of the time gradually reaching a nice climax, whether it’d be thanks to a guitar solo, a synth line on the last chorus or some heady industrial noise, nothing ever stagnates.
The album is so versatile and uses so many different techniques that it feels a bit overwhelming at times. For the guitar alone, you’ll find saturated chugging oriented riffs on one song, on another it’ll a be a straight forward rock approach, on another ballad chords, then Günter Schulz will make himself recognizable with one of his chugging + slide + hammer pull off signature riffs... and then use of chorus and then an accoustic part etc… all of this each time perfectly justified and relevant but a bit disorienting.
And handclaps. And choirs. And organs. And ominous electronic beats. And layers of synths. And “Ho-hoooo.” And harmonica.
Fatally, a combination necessarily will shock the listeners, whether it’ll be I’m so Wrong’s uplifting chorus or Toleration or Truth’s weird one, their conceptions will be challenged.
I personally find Found in Filth disagreeable. It doesn’t mean that what is said above doesn’t apply to this song. It simply means that it ventures to a genre which is not palatable to me: rock.
Also, if there’s a type of song that is not tackled it’s a KMFDM like type of song. On 1995’s Sinsation, The Sick and Paniac felt exactly as if they were off KMFDM’s Nihil, maybe because Nihil was more of a PIG album than anything else ? Anyway, The Gospel avoids so well treading on KMFDM’s ground that it feels as if it was done on purpose. On Make Yourself Deny, where Schulz’s riffing is so distinguishable, Watts chooses a singing style that removes any chance of sounding like their former band. Nowhere is there to be found any female choirs like on Pigmata’s Here to Stay either, no 2016 Juke Joint Jezebel.
Not that it makes the album less great. Simply, it’s impossible not to think of KMFDM while listening to PIG’s new album when PIG’s former line up (Andy Selway, Steve White, Jules Hodgson) has joined Sasha Konietzko in KMFDM and PIG’s actual line-up encompasses the two most important past members of KMFDM, En Esch and Günter Schulz, who left the band a long time ago because of some bad blood between them and Sasha Konietzko.
It doesn’t mean that The Gospel owes everything to these two old friends of Watts, Z. Marr (Combichrist) and Mark Thwaite (Combichrist, Primitive Race) did their job pretty well too. These two certainly helped freshen the Band’s sound which could easily have sounded dated.
And that’s also another of the album’s accomplishment. With all its nods at the past, The Gospel perspires 2016 by all its pores and the choirs, the electronics, loud and heavy noises have never suited Watts better. It’s too bad that the guitars weren’t given an opportunity to devastate everything on their path not even on one track.
