Fourteen years ago, Gallows released their second full-length record called Grey Britain and since then there has been no more accurate description of the current state of affairs of the United Kingdom than Land Of Sleeper, the new record by Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. However, do not think this is another monolithic Hardcore record, no, 7xPigs recorded a heavy, bluesy, noisey, doomy breather of a record that will turn a lot of people’s heads this year!
No, we are not going into politics because neither record explicitly did, but I want to talk about moods – and in my opinion both records hit the spot very well. 2009 was the time of the Lehman-Bros-financial-crash and this year is, well, we all know it. It’s the time of the war in the Ukraine, of global consequences on the markets and on all of us. But the UK seems to have been hit even worse this time, as supermarkets are putting maximums on vegetables and fruit, when it’s a wonder that a Prime Minister lasts more than four weeks, while all the country seems to be suffering from the shit that David ***** (insert curse of your choice) C. brought about and that the effin rat Farage then built up to feed his supermassive black ego of his which is probably caused by his eeny-weeny-mini-Wieny. I mean, come on, neither Huxley or Orwell could have scripted it any better!
This time it seems worse than fourteen years ago and therefore it causes and needs a new soundtrack and here 7xPigs step up the plate with Land of Sleeper. This is their ninth release in total and fourth full-length since their first one back in 2013 and indeed this is their heaviest. One simply cannot miss the noisey, less krauty side of this band as they are screaming in your face. Cave In had their ”Big Riff” as one of their signature songs, 7xPigs now have their ”Big Rig” which opens up like one heavy AF Blues tracks with a lot of distortion, so that one could also call it Sludge or Doom (it’s as much Melvins as it is Electric Wizard in all their brittleness) – that opener lasts for roughly 40 seconds and the bridge into the first stanza shows all the power this band has, because they turn the track into a Motörhead-homage without forgetting to sprinkle it up with some more Blues and some additional Psychedelia in the middle part. ”Big Rig” also is one of the most critical tracks without restraining to mere fist-pumping with the opening verse ”There is a sphere of burning tar, it’s all around / Everyone in this godforsaken English town / I wash away its filthy residue each day / But like a mould, it grows, ensuring our decay”. Talk about a place rotting away beneath its own creation. Interesting about the song is also the middle parts that always split the verse into a four-liner and into an ensuing (heroic) couplet! Mighty interesting also from a literary point of view because due to the split the couplets have even more to say, for example the second one ”Still, every day, I feel bad energies are here / But little signs of life make matters easier”. The chorus also speaks volumes when singer Matthew Baty shouts “This is / how we survive” and I just want to scream-insert the word “barely”!!
7xPigs also show that it doesn’t have to be uptempo and Punk in order to disrupt the seeming quiet in the country: in the highly psychedelic fourth track ”The Weatherman” (which also features a very soul-stirring choir) he screams ”There’s a storm coming … cold”. Only time will tell how much of the UK this storm will throw into chaos, but it’s good to know that a band is seeing the raging wind coming!
On the other hand this release might also contain some of their most obvious Blues tracks ever: ”Terror’s Pillow” would have been a perfect addition on many of the classic Blues Rock records of the 60s and 70s, heck if it had a tiny bit less distortion it would seem like a long-forgotten Cream-session. And when the last track, ”Ball Lightning”, gives us the highly effective one-key-intro before the Blues guitar strikes again and we hear the duet of Matt and guest singer Cath Tyler, then it’s up to us to ultimately understand the following: You do not have to scream about politics to show how bad the mood is in a current, as this track is Doom clad in despaired distortion.
Last year we had Chat Pile set the bar for Noise-Rock high and in 2023 it’s Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. It might be one of the highest bars in recent history, because it is rooted so deeply in a time in which the UK is going through one of the worst periods since the times of Churchill. This band puts the finger into the wound with their heavy songs and angry sounds and doesn’t leave the cuts until we all recognize where they come from and who made them.
