Raymond Watts courtesy Pig Industries
Self-proclaimed “Lord of Lard,” Raymond Watts of KMFDM, The Joy Thieves and Schwein renown is on tour with his marathon of a musical project, PIG. Watts launched PIG in 1988 and in May released the industrial rock band’s 20th album, Red Room. He has delivered again in his endless search for entrancing and nefarious soundscapes: Synth patches swirl around metal guitar riffs in an inescapable push and pull, while the drums march on into perdition.
The lyrics outline the silhouette of PIG’s dark intentions. “Bleed me be my eraser/My tightrope walker on my razor,” Watts growls on “False Flag,” from the new album. “Read my riot act of shame/Patron saint of pain come down.” But there’s an inherent playfulness coloring the gloom and doom. This is the crux of PIG’s brutal flavor of melancholy, the Lord of Lard capitalizing on a dark and discordant sense of humor. (The PIG catalogue overflows with release titles such as Pigmata and Swine & Punishment.)
At a PIG gig in South Florida that happens to be one night after Halloween, expect a horrifying and spine-chilling series of noises to emerge from the mind of Watts. It could be the perfect soundtrack for dancing in a crumbling factory, where explosive cave-ins make for great snare tone and the guitar sounds like walls of slurry. Watts’ dogmatic vocals are laced with something equally sinister and disturbed, suspended as if in an atmosphere of noise and smog.
Watts’ list of co-conspirators over the decades testifies to his durability and restless creativity since co-founding KMFDM forty years ago. En Esch (KMFDM, PIG, Slick Idiot), Steve White (KMFDM), Alexis Mincolla (3TEETH) and Chris Hall (Stabbing Westward) are just a few of the noteworthies. PIG’s history is a veritable grocery list of every innovative and influential industrial band, cementing Raymond’s place among the well-known names like Trent Reznor, who Watts has opened for many times, or internationally renowned groups like Buck-Tick. Watts has also worked prolifically as a producer for the Berlin and Hamburg underground scenes, leaving his bloody fingerprints all over danceable heavy metal.
PIG, unitcode:machine and Wicked Playground perform 7pm Friday, November 1 at Respectable Street in West Palm Beach. pigindustries.com ~ Erik Kvarnberg
