I like pigs. Lovely oinky creatures, they also taste nice.
After listening to the 2nd album from this New York trio, I think the band are OK too.
Pigs consists of Unsane’s Dave Curran, Freshkills’ Jim Paradise, and Converge producer Andrew Schneider, and they deal in the big-balled noisy rock that Americans just love to play. Fuzzed-up bravado, with plenty of those off-kilter, square-jawed, angular riffs that seems to dominate modern rock at the moment.
‘Wronger’ is a reasonably plucky affair that starts off on the wrong foot with its dangerously annoying intro ‘A Great Blight’.
Mood-setting lead-off tracks are normally a good thing, but several minutes of repetitive dirge almost runs this record into the mud, just as it’s left the pen. Thankfully, this massive boar is followed by the heavy-rockin’ kick of ‘The Life In Pink’, that features the kind of crackling vocals reminiscent of very early Marilyn Manson, with a side order of Lemmy. There is much to enjoy here, despite the ham-fisted mathcore intro.
‘Bet It All On Black’ is much punkier, but unfortunately runs foul of a lengthy and lethargic outro.
Elsewhere we have plenty of groove and chug, with the distortion of ‘Mope’ and the revved up slide riffing of ‘Wrap It Up’. But while the banjo interlude of ‘Mouth Dump’ doesn’t quite bring home the bacon, the L7 vibe of ‘Make Sure To Forget’ and the vocals being hogged by Julie Christmas (ex Battle of Mice) on ‘Bug Boy’, gets things back on track. Infact the female vocals work very well here, with Christmas providing the vox like an overdriven Björk. (Perhaps that should be P’örk). This highlight track might briefly make you forget what the original vocals sounded like, but the intense slide of the title track ‘Wronger’, and the epic finale of ‘Donnybrook’, shows the band at their most confident and considered. It’s particularly here, on the last track, that the big and bold nature of the band is really allowed to shine through on a record that is occasionally let down by moments of lost momentum.
‘Wronger’ is an album that may have benefited from more straight-ahead grooves on the trot, but give it a go, and you may just find yourself getting jiggy with this piggy.
(6.5/10 Stuart Carroll)
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