Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, The Mill, Birmingham review – Geordie rockers blow the roof off

When those cold winter nights start closing in, there is really only two choices for facing up to the unpleasantness that this brings. Stay at home, batten down the hatches, whack up the heating and blow the expense. Or go out and immerse yourself in some hot and sweaty rock’n’roll.

Clearly, the majority of us at theartsdesk.com favour the second option. So, when the raucous Pigsx7 finally made it to Birmingham to support their Viscerals album of 18 months ago, there really was no choice about what to do.

It may have been cold and wet outside, but Pigsx7 weren’t going to be guided by that with their stage wear. Striding on in front of the audience looking somewhat pasty in shorts and t-shirts – except for ever-cool guitarist Adam Sykes, who looked particularly dapper, dressed in black – they soon got into the swing of things by launching into the artillery barrage of the speedy “Reducer” with a retina-burning explosion of lights where previously there had just been a fug of dry ice. From there, they took the thumping “Rubbernecker” and “Halloween Bolson” from their new album and pulverised them, while bouncing around like Geordie goblins.

“It’s always special to play Birmingham” announced singer Matt Baty to much hilarity, “As that’s where our musical fathers come from – UB40”. It was almost as if this was a signal for the audience to liven up, as next tune, the foot-stomping “Sweet Relief” saw the mosh pit erupt in no uncertain terms. Bodies slammed into each other, beer was spilled, and an almost constant flow of bodies began crowd-surfing towards the stage.

“Gloamer” may have slowed the tempo down initially and saw Baty crawling around the stage on all-fours as he growled into the microphone. However, it soon picked up a pace and more bodies surfed over the rest of the audience as they were pulled towards the band like salmon flinging themselves upstream to spawn.

Referring to his recently grown moustache, Baty then made some comment about taking on the guise of a Poundshop Freddy Mercury before the band hit the accelerator for the howling “GNT”. This drove the crowd into an ever-greater frenzy with even more bodies flying over the front barrier – something that continued through the sonic bulldozer of “World Crust”. From there, “New Body” threw down monolithic slabs of industrial noise with a snarling intensity, as ever-greater numbers of 20-, 30- and 40-somethings lost themselves in the primal groove.

Stopping for a brief breather, before final tune, the exuberant “A66”, Baty explained that there would be no encore – explaining that bands who did such things clearly weren’t putting everything into their performance. This isn’t anything that these musical berserkers could ever be accused of doing. The howling guitars and ear-battering bass and drums made this crystal clear as Baty urged the band and the crowd onwards by yowling “Has he lost his mind?”.

That may be open to question, but it really can’t be denied that performances like this are exactly what we’ve been missing for the last couple of years.

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