Review Summary: [Three laudatory adjectives starting with the same letter].
Since his come back in 2015 for a great EP with Primitive Race Raymond Watts/PIG has been firing on all cylinders, releasing five albums in eight years (Red Room is due to May) plus several Eps and remix albums and a cover album too. That’s a lot to nurture the audience’s perverted souls.
Obviously, the whole story would be of less interest if The Gospel, Risen, Pain is God and Merciless Light weren’t good, but the band really is in stunning shape. Very rarely, when listening to these albums, do listeners will get the feeling that something went wrong, that something failed to achieve what the band was aiming at, everything feels mastered and accutely focussed.
So… what went wrong on The Merciless Light? Well. Nothing went wrong, it’s just as good as the three previous albums even though it’s strayed a bit more from the indus/metal formula that blessed The Gospel and Risen.
The Merciless Light offers the same blend of hugely diverse musical genres as the previous outputs. There’s industrial sounds, electro stuff, some Pendulum sounding drum’n’bass (Speak of Sin), heavy/trash guitars, jazzy swinging brass, gospelly soulfoul female vocals and the deep crooning voice of Raymond Watts uttering his usual perverted sermons. KMFDM, Laibach and Rammstein spring to mind a few times.
From the point of view of the band’s relationship with KMFDM, one of Pig’s achievement is to not sound like Sasha Konietzko should have been there to improve the electronics. They do not feel sparse or subpar, the layers of electronic flourishes are here crunchy and entertaining and they do their job very well.
Now, if there is something negative to say about the music, it would be that it sometimes struggles to give a feeling of general cohesion. Even though Watts’ voice is unmissable and necessarily introduces a common point between every track, there is very little chance that one will feel like listening to every song on the album in one go.
It’s very easy to praise Limbo for example, but it sounds like a glorified interlude in the musical context of the album. And from the point of view of its tempo, it’s not the sole track to feel like one. Sugar My Pill and Veni, Vidi, Vici also kill the sense of pace.
The slight problem with the substantial diversity of genres tackled is that many songs are actually better on their own or introduced in a PIG compilation than listened to as part of the ensemble called The Merciless Light. Let’s make a comparison: the last Korn album, Requiem, consists of nine songs written following virtually the same approach. It’s a good album and anybody who feels in the mood to listen to Forgotten or Let the Dark do the Rest, will actually be in the mood to listen to the whole album. Whereas when it comes to The Merciless Light, the jarring shifts in mood, tempo and style are just a bit too much for the listener to just not feel like skipping a lot of tracks. The niche aspect of the music doesn’t help as the genres blended in the songs themselves aren’t necessarily entirely compatible either. There's also the problem of a few songs slightly overstaying their welcome or relying a bit too much on their choruses.
Still, it's a Garnished, Gilded and Glamorous album with much to offer.
(3.8/5)
Recommended tracks:
No Yes More Less
Feed The Wound
Speak of Sin
Glitz Krieg
The Dark Room
The Merciless Light
Tarantula
