PIG mark the release of new album ‘The Gospel’ with a UK tour, for which the Lord of Lard Raymond Watts has enlisted former KMFDM colleagues En Esch and Günter Schulz, Greg Steward aka Z.Marr (formerly of Combichrist) and Galen Waling (Left Spine Down/16 Volt).

The ‘Swine & Punishment’ tour is jointly headlined with Mortiis. Dates are as follows:

10.03.17  NOTTINGHAM Rescue Rooms

11.03.17  GLASGOW Ivory Blacks

12.03.17  NEWCASTLE Think Tank

13.03.17  YORK Fibbers

14.03.17  SHEFFIELD Plug

15.03.17  MANCHESTER Ruby Lounge

16.03.17  BRISTOL The Fleece

17.03.17  NORWICH Epic Studios

18.03.17  LONDON The Garage

PIG and Mortiis have also recently reworked one of each other’s songs for new remix records.

PIG’s is entitled ‘Swine & Punishment’ and will be released in May. It also features

remixes by the likes of Chris Vrenna (as Tweaker), Kanga, Skold and Marc Heal of Cubanate

(as MC Lord Of The Flies).

PIG – biography

In 1986 Raymond Watts awoke in West Berlin. It was a time of terror and turmoil, in a city

so depraved and decadent that the East Germans had walled it in. Watts had cut his teeth

on tape loops in London and Hamburg, but inspired by Berlin’s fetid air and his first 8-bit

sampler, he gave birth to PIG in 1988. A year earlier, in Hamburg, he had written and

recorded the first KMFDM album and single with En Esch and Sascha Konietzko. He had also helped deliver the sonic slaughter of Einstürzende Neubauten, Psychic TV, Die Haut, and most of the Berlin and Hamburg underground, as both live and studio sound engineer and producer.

PIG was cut from the belly of Watts with a rusty screwdriver in a basement opposite The Wall. The first squeals were committed to tape and saw the light of day as ‘A Poke in the Eye’, which the ultra-hip US label Wax Trax! jumped to release. After writing the music for the second KMFDM album, Watts then slipped away to tour with Foetus, playing keyboards and guitar.

He returned to Berlin to produce (with Jim Thirlwell aka Foetus), the classic PIG 12”, ‘Sick City’. Under the name 2 Kut he also made a series of 12”s that featured the likes of Blixa Bargeld and Jim Thirlwell.

When The Wall collapsed, the party was over. Watts returned to London and PIG albums poured forth: ‘Praise The Lard’, ‘A Stroll In The Pork’, ‘Shit For Brains’, ‘Red Raw & Sore’ and ‘The Swining’. Watts programmed, produced and performed, ploughing a lone furrow until Karl Hyde, singer and sinner with Underworld, came to his assistance on guitars.

By this time, Watts had also developed a taste for all things Japanese. His label was based there, his morals were parked there and PIG had toured there many times. He was soon involved with a highly successful bunch of ne’er-do-wells called Schaft. Their album ‘Switchblade’ and a sold-out tour followed.

In 1994, PIG opened for NIN. This led to the next PIG album, ‘Sinsation’, being released on Trent Reznor’s Nothing label…. and then a return to Wax Trax! for ‘Wrecked’. Both albums were acclaimed. Watts also rejoined KMFDM in 1994 for the PIG v KMFDM EP ‘Sin, Sex & Salvation’.

For the ensuing album Nihil Watts took over writing and vocal duties, spawning ‘Juke Joint Jezebel’, a massive crossover industrial/dance hit. Multiple remixes by Giorgio Moroder took the single to a whole new audience. Several sold-out tours followed, with Watts orchestrating the chaos from centre-stage like a rampant ringmaster armed only with talent and tequila.

When not on tour, Watts could be found in his Ranch Apocalypse studios in London, working on PIG’s ‘No One Gets Out of Her Alive’, ‘Prime Evil’, ‘Disrupt Degrade & Devastate’ and the KMFDM album ‘Symbols’. On the album ‘Genuine American Monster’, Watts reunited with legendary guitarist Günter Schulz.

While in Toyko, Watts gave birth to the band Schwein with Sascha Konietzko and the Japanese superstars Sakurai and Imai. The albums ‘Schweinstein’ and ‘Son Of Schweinstein’ and a further sold-out tour ensued.

After releasing the PIG album ‘Pigmartyr’ (‘Pigmata’ on Metropolis), Watts spent time in London indoctrinating his piglets and initiating them into the parish of the pork. When not leading his children down the path of righteousness, he could be found writing music for fashion and films for Alexander McQueen, Chloe, Marios Schwab, Halston, The Row and others. He also wrote music and did sound design for ‘Punk: Chaos to Couture’, an exhibition at the Met in New York.

In the final show before his death, Alexander McQueen commissioned Watts and John Gosling, Watts’s old partner-in-crime from Psychic TV days, to embellish the serene instrumental track ‘Inside’, from PIG’s ‘Genuine American Monster’ album. This became the fluid soundtrack to what is seen as McQueen’s masterpiece, ‘Plato’s Atlantis’. This show was reprised as the finale of ‘Savage Beauty’, the McQueen retrospective that broke all records at the Met in New York and the V&A in London. Watts also wrote other original music and did sound design for the show.

In 2015, PIG dipped his trotter in the trough once more, releasing both the much lauded PIG v Primitive Race EP ‘Long In The Tooth’, and the ‘Compound Eye Sessions: PIG v MC Lord of the Flies’ (aka Marc Heal of Cubanate). The Primitive Race collaboration brought together Watts and Mark Thwaite, of The Mission, Tricky and Peter Murphy fame, amongst many others. Together they set about writing what would become the main column of misery around which the new PIG album, ‘The Gospel’, has been built. Watts’ newest partner in swine, Z.Marr (ex-Combichrist), shares production and writing duties.

The new PIG album, ‘The Gospel’, contains twelve songs of ruin, redemption, resolution and resurrection. Across this tale of grime and punishment En Esch and Günter Schulz leave their unmistakable trail of greasy fingerprints.