Despite their, frankly, excessive band name, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs know not to overstay their welcome when it comes to albums. While two songs on 2017’s Feed the Rats were over fifteen minutes long, you can get away with that when your record only has three tracks on it. Likewise their 2018 breakthrough King of Cowards, which capped proceedings at six songs. Now their third album proper, Viscerals, comes in at eight tracks – one of which, unusually for them, doesn’t even hit the two minute mark. The Pigs aren’t messing about here. 

Viscerals is a much tighter record than the band’s previous efforts. It can be difficult to avoid sacrificing depth in the pursuit of a leaner sound, but nothing is lost here. Lead single ‘Reducer’, for example, is an absolute onslaught of riffs and blistering vocals, while the one-and-a-half-minute long ‘Blood and Butter’ momentarily breaks up the pace with a deeply unsettling spoken-word account of the ‘social pressure cooker’. Meanwhile, the thrashing ‘World Crust’ and ‘Crazy In Blood’ ensure that Viscerals lives up to its name. 

The new Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs album is a visceral experience. The record is all guts and glory, tauter than before and all the better for it. It’s relentless; an all-out-assault of riffs and rumblings that pushes Pigs to new heights.