Most artists inching into their sixties tend to settle into a groove, content with comfortable template—punching releases every so often, as much to remind their fans they’re still alive as anything. Not so Raymond Watts, now age 61, who has enjoyed the most consistently creative decade of his career to date – and it’s been quite a career, having contributed to KMFDM and emerged with the PIG moniker circa ’88.
Since the largely unexpected renaissance of PIG, as represented by Rise and Repent and The Gospel in 2016, Watts has been on a roll, and not only has he been cranking out new music at a remarkable rate, but each release has explored new facets, while retaining the quintessential PIG sound, a blend of industrial grind, stomping glam and immense bombast – and delicious wordplay, if course.
And not even a global pandemic can slow his output. ‘Baptise Bless & Bleed’ was only released in May, and now PIG are back with a brand new full-length, and full-girth album.
The press release hams it up nicely, of course, asking, ‘What does worldwide quarantine do to our favorite porcine libertine? Raymond Watts holed up in his sty, creating The Merciless Light, the new album… Ably aided and abetted by long time accomplices En Esch and Steve White, on ‘The Merciless Ligh’t, Watts welcomes a new swine to the trough, as Jim Davies (Pitchshifter/The Prodigy and more) joins, lending a whole new level of impeccable credibility and talent. The new album seethes, swings, seduces and snarls. Extraordinary electronics and a glut of glitz, glam, guitars and grooves create a masterful mélange of mirth malice and winking wit from our very own venerable Vicar of Vice’.
All of the classic PIG facets are in place: bleeps and bloops, stark and sweeping synths, thick, gritty guitar chugs, snarling vocals, and absolutely immense choruses. From the first track, ‘No Less More Yes’, it’s not only vintage PIG but also a showcase in top-notch songwriting. In less than five minutes, it’s emotive and it’s epic, like an industrial Bond theme tune, even finding room in the dense mix for some rolling piano. It’s nothing less than you’d expect: PIG albums have a habit of opening strong – check ‘A Stroll in The Pork’, ‘Sinsation’, ‘Wrecked’, or even right back to ‘…A Poke in the Eye’ or ‘Praise the Lard’ – and you’ll find that PIG pile in hard upfront.
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‘The Merciless Light’ is as riffy as anything, but it’s not by any stretch a po-faced exercise in industrial trudge: ‘Feed the Wound’ is beefy Eurodisco, a stomping collision of Rammstein and Abba. This is Watts all over, revelling in the contradictions and juxtapositions, rendering the incongruous seem entirely natural. He’s serious about the music, but you can hear the glint in eye as he plays with genre forms to render his own hybrid, and revelling in the permutational wordplay.
‘Limbo’ brings strutting jazz with a sneer, reminiscent of Foetus’ ‘Bedrock’, and reminds us that Watts worked with and alongside JG Thirlwell in the 80s. If you’re going to learn from anyone, the master of disaster, Clint Ruin has to be a top choice.
‘Glitz Kreig’ brings it all: a glam stomp with a disco twist, bright lights, trilling organs, and an eye-popping explosion of pundemoneum, before the brooding, synth-grind driven ‘Sugar My Pill’ takes the temp and the mood down and cranks the bombastic sleaze up several notches. Single cut ‘The Dark Room’ has a more serrated edge, while the title track is, in contrast, sparser, starker, and finds Watts in more reflective mode, a tense, hushed vocal pitched against a scratchy and minimal musical backing, again led by piano, that eventually builds into something bold and choral.
In terms of consistency across an album, ‘The Merciless Light’ is as good as anything to have been released under the PIG moniker at any time, and since the bar is high given the late 80s and early 90s output, that’s a serious achievement.
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