Age Of Panic
Proving the adage that desperate times call for desperate measures, Boston’s All Pigs Must Die are resonating with the commotion of our current era
Look around you: the world is going to shit. One cursory glance at the news, and it’s a deluge of apathetic politicians, alternative facts and sensationalist conjecture being hurled by both sides of the moral coin. It’s a confusing mess of hyperbole that can’t be escaped, leading to mass turmoil and outrage from the global populous. It’s no surprise, then, that some of the world’s most savage and barbaric music is coming back, gnashing its teeth and hunting for blood.
Music is cyclical, and the vicious crust of the 80s UK underground is rearing its head, but with a newer, more transatlantic edge. Standing at the fore of the resurgence are All Pigs Must Die. The ‘supergroup’ was formed in 2009 by Bloodhorse’s Adam Wentworth and Matt Woods, who were then joined by Converge’s Ben Koller, The Hope Conspiracy’s Kevin Baker and, recently, Brian Izzi from Trap Them. Together, they bring the might and the menace of Boston, Massachusetts’ doomier, heavier and more aggressive sounds into one cathartic roar, and on latest album Hostage Animal, their flinging fist has become a chokehold, dragging you deep into the harrowing abyss. This isn’t a happy sound, but it goes deep.
Adam found heavy music as a teenager through his first girlfriend, and soon started going to shows, discovering the heavier, crustier end of metal.
“Anything that was fast, aggressive and loud, I’d give it a chance,” he says, reflecting on his introduction to the hardcore community. “When I grew up The Rat was still open, which was Boston’s CBGB in a way. The weekend always had punk and hardcore shows, so you’d go into the city in the day, hang out and drink in the alley, and after the show someone would have a space or a warehouse to hang out in and continue.”
Sometimes cliques in alternative music are a refuge for outsiders, but that wasn’t something Adam was actively looking for. For him it was all about the music. Although it did help having friends when going into bondage shops as a teenager to buy pyramid studs, stumbling across people playing football with a butt plug.
“One thing that got me into crusty d-beat stuff was Doom,” he says. “My friend gave me the Hail To Sweden seven-inch.
The cover was amazing.
It’s a photocopy of
Manowar’s Hail To
England with a Doom sticker on it, then
England crossed out and replaced with
Sweden. That was my introduction to both Doom and all these awesome Swedish hardcore bands.”
Doom were just one British band in the late 80s/early 90s jackhammering grind and punk into the eardrums of the masses, standing alongside the likes of Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror. It was violent, discordant and bile-fuelled music rallying against Margaret Thatcher’s regime as Prime Minster and the bleakness that entailed. It’s a very British notion, but one that rang out across The Pond and resonated with the disaffected youth. “You relate to the emotion from it and the sentiment, even though I had no idea what it was like to live in Thatcher’s England,” remembers Adam. “Because I have no reference points it’s abstracted, so you can put that against something you’re frustrated with in your own life.
Lyrically, you’re not connecting the dots, but emotionally you are.”
Politics has never really been on Adam’s radar. All Pigs Must Die are not a political band, he stresses, and he’s never been interested in a band’s ideologies – it was punk’s sense of humour that attracted him to the genre. Recently in the US there’s been a resurgence of crust and grind. Bands such as Trap Them, Black Breath and Nails are adding an American slant on something so indebted in British music history. Why?
“Aren’t we always copying what you guys did?” he laughs. “Some of it is coming from kids that are into hardcore and then discovering black metal. Trying to play blastbeats and black metal stuff sort of lands like this crusty punk thing.”
Adam goes on to describe an overwhelming feeling of frustration he feels in the US, so such frantic, violent music might be the solution. There’s a sense of information overload in everyday society; being constantly connected to world news isn’t necessarily healthy or a positive. From the exhausting politics to sensational news reporting to constant left/right-wing point-scoring that abandons logic and reason, it’s enough to give any sane person a nervous breakdown. And it’s this sense of overwhelming frustration and anger that has fuelled All Pigs Must Die’s new album, Hostage Animal.
“It’s the idea of being held hostage in your own mind, a state of confusion and a state of groundlessness where you have so much information coming at you that you can’t make heads or tails within your own mind,” says Adam of Hostage Animal’s raison d’être. “You’re unable to reconcile within yourself and that causes you to lash out and become purely reactionary, so you retreat back into the cage within.”
It’s not just the lyrical side of the album that speaks to people’s neuroses. In fact, it actively tries to conjure a negative mental response.
“On the track End Without End there’s a guitar lead that’s just two notes that’s meant to be irritating. It’s meant to creep up and just be this hanging thing that raises your anxiety and makes you feel uncomfortable.”
Recorded in December of last year, Adam describes Hostage Animal as the most intense record All Pigs Must Die have recorded, and the most internalised. Yet he himself is no stranger to anxiety, stemming from when he used to live in New York City.
“Anxiety just hangs in the air there. I’d be packed on the subway, like in a cattle car, an inch away from some guy’s face, breathing in this guy coughing. It’s like, ‘Why am I here?’
The speed of life is so intense, it grinds you down. It got to a point where I had to get out.”
Despite the overarching feelings of frustration and anxiety, the album is open to interpretation, and Adam explains the lyrics shouldn’t be taken at face value. On the overpowering closer Heathen Reign, Kevin Baker screams ‘There is no god!’, which resonates with Adam on various levels.
“God is what controls you, what can be driving you,” he says. “I was raised in a Catholic house so god is what you’re scared of when you’re raised to fear. I think fear is such a strong motivator. Some people live their life based on what they’re scared of and it becomes this controlling factor.”
Fear and panic are just two of the emotions conveyed in the album’s murky, soulless waters. A lot of feeling and fervour is crammed into the 10 songs with not a wasted second or note out of place – a technique borrowed from crime noir author James Ellroy, who cut down the first draft of LA Confidential by 100 pages by removing any word that wasn’t absolutely imperative.
“We didn’t take it to that extreme, says Adam, “but once we were happy with it, we took a step back to look at what doesn’t need to be there. A record of this style of music, anything that’s over 35-40 minutes is too long. I love this stuff and even I can’t listen to it for that long,” he laughs. “There’s enough sensory overload going on in the world, we have the less is more attitude.”
While this may sound like it’s sucking the fun out of music, it’s the opposite. Adam reiterates how much he and his bandmates love All Pigs Must Die. “The happiest you’ll see any of us is at band practice,” he says with an audible smile. “We’re not a full-time band, we’re all just friends, so it never gets to a point where you see your band as co-workers. When we go on tour it’s like vacation. We go sightseeing!”
In fact, Adam doesn’t even identify as a ‘hardcore guy’ despite his musical output. “There’s a youthful aspect to this music but it’s not a lifestyle for me, if you saw me on the street you wouldn’t know I play in a metal band. I’m just in jeans and a t-shirt buying a coffee. I’m a regular guy with irregular interests.” Which, in a way, is the true meaning of punk.
HOSTAGE ANIMAL IS OUT NOW VIA SOUTHE RN LORD