Any band staging a ‘Headbanger of the Night’ competition during their set, must have plans to make a heck of a lot of noise, and heavy stoner metallers Pigs x7 do not disappoint. Or as frontman Matthew Baty shamelessly introduces the band “from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, coming in at a combined weight of 833lbs, the heavyweight champions of the woooorld – Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs!”. In a Stone Cold Steve Austin shirt, of course.
Pigs x7 @ Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth
Fellow Newcastle-upon-Tyne punk band Irked open, and set a precedent for earsplitting volume tonight. Vocalist Helen Walkinshaw goes from curled up in a ball, to furiously pacing in circles, to high-kicking, to diving into the crowd in no time, as she vents blunt, rapid choruses about what irks them. Despite the enveloping dirty guitars and bass sound, her personal turmoil punches through.
It would be of no surprise if the band were in a bad mood. Guitarist Simon Hubbard explains to the audience that it has been a long day. As the first date of the tour, they have ventured for seven hours all the way to the deep south of Portsmouth (apparently exotic enough territory that they only learned tonight that it is an island) – the furthest away from home that they have ever performed. This fact alone got the crowd cheering.
Despite the fury in the songs, there are kind souls in there. The set can be split tidily in half – before and after they perform Who Asked? (A song about people picking fights with Helen.”). After Helen’s final why does everybody wanna fuck with me?”, Simon apologises for the bad language (and does so several times), and everyone begins to crack smiles in gratitude to an enthusiastic Portsmouth crowd coming down early, even when tackling deadly serious topics, such as predators who aren’t policed, during closer Backstreets.
Set to the sound of AC/DC’s For Those About to Rock, a bold statement, the room begins to fill with a dense fog, which makes tonight’s main event little more than blurry silhouettes. Not even one of the “Pigs” on the Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs” backdrop would be visible until the lights came back up at the end of the night, the band instead illuminated by intense red strobes.
Pigs x7 open with The Wyrm – the first of five tracks from new album Death Hilarious, which are getting their live debuts tonight. The opening build-up (if something so loud can even be considered the quiet bit”) is a looping riff with such a heavy and growling low end, that the closest thing to a tune that emerges comes from the bass. The guitar is so detuned and sonically filthy that chords became a percussive and chugging crunch. This is until Matthew bounds in with a ballistic crab-walk, or crab-jog, and there is a sudden injection of energy as they progress from trudging doom, to thumping psychedelic metal. And back and forth, many times.
Matthew rants jokingly about how 1990s party pop icons Vengaboys have been booked for Download Festival 2025, and that Pigs x7 have never been asked. This is met with pantomime-like boos from the crowd, as he introduces their next song as a twisted cover of Boom Boom Boom Boom. It is twisted enough that the song is actually Pigs x7’s perfectly-titled 2023 single Ultimate Hammer, but nonetheless, it provides more boom than Vengaboys could dream of.
Although Pigs x7 have moved on from the fifteen-minute experimental odysseys of their 2018 debut album, in favour of more refined songs, the unpredictable, jagged slow-fast-slow journey of the show does not make their music any easier to digest for anyone unprepared for such raw, sludgy power. Or those who are prepared, for that matter. After an hour, with a couple more songs to go, even Matthew concedes that he is a bit puffed out, as he looks down at the new setlist for the tour – “phwoar, it’s a fucking doozy this set…”. It’s just that punishing.
Still, as proven by the intensity of ten-minute closer mainstay A66, with such outgoing and entertaining, energetic defiance, you can guarantee that there is no way that they will learn their lesson and drop any of the songs for future shows. It’s a challenge that Pigs x7 are more than happy to take on, and it sounds amazing.
Live review of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs @ Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth on 2nd April 2025 by Nick Pollard. Photography by Rebecca Cairns.
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