Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Irked at Koko, London 04.04.2024

Every once in a while you come across a band that you followed since the beginning, when they played in tiny venues, and eventually you get to a place when you get a new job, walk into your new office and see someone wearing their t-shirt (and decide in an instant they will become your best friend, but that’s a story for another day). This was precisely the case with me and Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. a decade ago my mate Rich Collins started the cult promotion Cosmic Carnage which would bring what it said on the tin first to The Windmill in Brixton, and eventually moved with Rich to The Moon in Cardiff. It was at one of those nights back in 2014 when I first witnessed Pigs x7. I was a budding concert photographer lending my (very much work in progress at that time) skills to a mate. They might have been playing their first show in London. Matt Baty was wearing a hooded kaftan, which mysteriously went missing after the gig, only to be found in someone’s basement years later. They played material that would later become Feed The Rats, their debut album, and I became an instant fan for life.

It was a really proud moment to walk into Koko a whole decade later to see them play a venue with ten times the capacity of The Windmill, and to acknowledge how far they – but also me – have come.

Irked

Opening the night’s proceedings was the punk supergroup Irked from Pigs’s hometown of Newcastle. The five-piece consists of band members who count the likes of Blóm, Weekend Faithful, Biscuit Mouth, Frankie & The Heartstrings, Pet Crow, Cave Suns, Tough Tits, Shy Talk and Pure Graft among their combined past experience, and you could really appreciate their musicianship. They delivered a relentless performance, with Helen “Hells” Walkinshore’s vocals being simultaneously guttural, full of fury and heavily distorted, but delivered with poise and very calming presence. She would often crouch on the stage almost as if to take a moment, and even when she walked off and into the audience, she was composed and statuesque, while the wall of noise coming from the microphone conveyed layers and layers of, well, irk. The accompanying riffs were as heavy and filthy as they come.

They delivered a set that alternated tracks from their self-titled EP (2024, Scene Report Records) with older and newer material. They don’t shy away from heavy hitting social and political themes and they ended their performance on a triple whammy: their newest single ‘Hardest Man in Billingham’, followed by ‘Crippling Empath’ and ending with the EP’s first single ‘Backstreets’ about violence against women. really hitting hard and heavy and resonating with the audience. They finished by saying ‘we’ve been Irked and we will be back’ – and I’m curious to see what will irk them next.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs

After a quick changeover (it was Friday at Koko, so we were under a strict 9:30 curfew) and to the hypnotic chants ‘Pigs! Pigs! Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!’ the Newcastle quintet took to the stage and turned Koko into the altar to their utter brilliance. The date coincided with the release of their fifth album Death Hilarious – with its titled borrowed from Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’, the tone was instantly set. The intro riffs of the first track ‘The Wyrm’ set the pace for the night, and it could only be described as relentless. Adam Ian Sykes took to his lead guitar, John Micheal Headley to his bass, Sam Grant to the second guitar and Ewan Mackenzie sat behind the drums. Before erupting to the centre of the stage, Matt Baty started off behind a synth, but once he was in the ring, we were off to the (quite literal) riff races.

If you haven’t seen Pigs x7 live before, the performance they deliver is part a ceremony of which Matt is the master, part a wrestling match of which Matt is the Emcee, part ‘therapy through noise’ – and it’s delivered with such charisma and stage presence that it really needs to be witnessed. It’s visceral, physical and magnetic and the vocals that arch over the unrelenting riffs are echoey and transcendent. Taking the best parts of Motörhead and Black Sabbath and skilfully flavouring them with shoegaze, doom and punk, the result is hypnotic and the 1500 capacity venue was eating out of their hands.

Despite having a new record out, the first part of the set delivered a string of fan favourites from previous records, like ‘Mr Medicine’ – a mantra with riffs about transcending fear through a of rite of passage. Peppering the music with incredible dead pan banter, Matt took repeated jabs at Download Festival – and this year’s addition of Vengaboys to the line up, which became an entertaining theme to the night. Pigs x7 have never been booked for Download, so they decided to deliver ‘a cover of ‘Boom Boom Boom’ – which happened to be ‘Ultimate Hammer’ from 2023’s Land Of Sleeper. The turbo-charged assault that is ‘Reducer’ took us back to the 2020s seminal Viscerals and the first crowd surfers were out.

The ever-heavy doom of ‘Carousel’ and fast riffs ‘Stitches’ brought us back to Death Hilarious, but the new material sat incredibly comfortably in the set, elevating Pigs’s signature thunderous, fierce and ever-evolving sound. ‘GNT’ from 2018s King Of Cowards was a particular fan favourite, and as someone who has followed the band for a decade, it was a joy to see many familiar faces in the first rows of Koko. It was also clear that Pigs x7 genuinely appreciate their audience – to the point of giving out the ‘Headbanger Of The Night’ award to the most deserving fan.

Ending the night on a heavy note, Pigs x7 delivered their doomiest, gloomiest and dirtiest riffs on ‘Collider’ just to end on the wonderfully psychedelic ‘A66’, as appears to have become tradition. Despite the chants for more Pigs! Pigs! Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!, we had to vacate the premises for the club night – but the swirling queue to the merch desk on the way out wouldn’t let Koko get rid of us that quickly. Ending early meant that Camden was filling up with the already iconic ‘I must have pissed off God’ t-shirts – I cannot wait to wear mine to the office next week.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs continue their tour of UK in April and you can catch them in Europe in May. And if you haven’t yet – get that ticket already.