Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs
King Of Cowards

Yes, I already know what you're thinking. And the answer is: yes, that's the group's name. And the answer to the second question is: no, I don't listen to them because it's cool to brag about listening to bands with silly names.

The Pigs x 7 (as they have renamed themselves for practicality) emerged from the cheerful Newcastle last year (but in reality they were already on their second album) with a sonic behemoth named “Feed The Rats”, hailed as saviors by the webzines orbiting around the heavy music galaxy, but to me, it was not very convincing. It might be my age, but now it's hard for me to get emotionally involved by albums with three tracks, two of which exceed 15 minutes. Also, the singer's shouted-cavernous voice left me puzzled.

But then in September, this “King Of Cowards” came out, and whether it's the abrupt drop in temperatures, or more likely the tracklist with six tracks of durations acceptable for my attention span, I managed to enter their world. A pleasant apocalyptic world just right, where hooded people worship the six-string god Toni Iommi, but also the psychedelic Doom of Electric Wizard and the healthy acid jamming of the fathers, Hawkwind. Not forgetting a deserved bow to the heavier stoner rock, like Beaver and other obscure bands we unfortunate forty-year-olds listened to a couple of decades ago, thinking they were the future of all music.

I have so thoroughly revised my judgment, as if I were a master of the 180° somersault like Capezzone or Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, that the singer's voice is now the added value of the album. Without these echo-filled shouts, somewhere between baritone and screamed, they would be a group like any other. But damn, a total post-stoner track like “A66” wouldn't sound as menacing without that voice. Similarly, the psychedelic doom (albeit too indebted to Electric Wizard) of “Shockmaster”. But the best tracks are at the beginning and end: “GNT” opens the album with a riff like Hawkwind, but with the decibels of 2018, and features a slowdown switch halfway through that will severely test the necks of more than one of my peers as they headbang furiously. The other track is “Gloamer”, the nemesis of “GNT”: slow, pensive, traversed by sudden electric bursts, while singer Matt Bady alternates bestial shouts with a laid-back talk, up to the final acceleration and the announced collapse of this beautiful magma.

Heavy album of the year? For now, yes, and hands down.