PIG – Dirtbox
PIG – Dirtbox
Metropolis Records
Release date: 04/09/26
Review by Jon Deaux
5/10
Dirt Box is the result of a 60-something industrial man looking at his merch table and deciding that it is high time for the faithful to see the itemized bill.
This corpse has been whipped into shape for so long that the corpse pays for his mortgage.
A mere fifteen PIG albums in, the artist continues to present another collection of industrial din and the kind of outfits that clearly show he has never even considered the possibility of Casual Friday. When Watts made his debut, industrial rock was still sounding like something threatening, before KMFDM became the old band on a reunion tour and nobody even imagined putting an industrial band on a nostalgia cruise.
He has collaborated with Einstürzende Neubauten, Foetus and Psychic TV; worked in Japan with Schwein and Schaft, composed music for films and television and fashion; and wrote the soundtrack for Alexander McQueen’s Plato’s Atlantis. He has such an amazing resume. The fact that he keeps producing new PIG albums is definitely ridiculous.
Dirt Box appears at the very beginning of a 44-show tour throughout North America. We are promised eight tracks, four of them original songs and four remixes. The list of tracks on the album features seven tracks – and it sounds like the kind of mistake PIG would consider artistic.
The title is good, though.
It is dirty, silly and perfectly appropriate.
‘An American Ideal of Beauty’ kicks off the album with its fantastic industrial march. It seems that Watts has just watched America admiring itself in a pharmacy mirror and decided that it should kick the window in with its foot.
The track has proper hooks under all the noise. And that is important. Watts was never happy with the simple creation of noise and calling it art. There is always a song under all the PIG machinery, and he sometimes buries it under all the electronics necessary to file for divorce.
This one works particularly well. The production is heavy but not shapeless, and Watts sings his vocals with a usual combination of theatricality and arrogance. You get the impression that he has been waiting for the last five decades for an opportunity to say “I told you so,” and enjoys finding the material for that in our life.
‘Your Reptilian Overlord Presents’ sounds like a conspiracy theory somebody has been able to put on a record.
The theory is silly. Watts knows that. But he doesn’t give a damn.
Something is amusing in listening to a mature man singing about reptilian overlords with total confidence. The track starts as camp and becomes gradually less funny. Not because of the theory becoming convincing – but because of Watts selling the paranoia so well that you start thinking that the fellow sitting across from you in the pub was just substituted by a lizard.
And you will buy him a beer anyway.
Infidel is where the EP gets really nasty. The rhythm is heavy and has a grinding momentum, and Watts is especially venomous here. It fits well with his voice, as it has always worked best when it sounds like he is speaking to the person who seriously pissed him off.
There is something darkly comic in it as well. You see the entire congregation being sent out into the rain as the disco ball keeps spinning inside.
I will attend that church.
‘Butterfly’ is the odd track on the EP – at least, on paper. It seems like a scary prospect for Watts to try tenderness, but he manages it. The track has more melody and a little less brute force, but even PIG’s idea of tenderness involves plenty of machinery, making the neighbors suspicious.
It turns out that tenderness means that the threat is wearing a nice shirt.
The remixes are somewhat varied.
Cyanotic’s remix of ‘Your Reptilian Overlord Presents’ moves it further in the electronic direction. The result is cleaner and more club-oriented, but some of the character of the original disappears. It is a perfectly competent track; but you might be able to play it in the branch of Fitness First without evacuating everybody.
Chris Hall’s Stabbing Westward remix of ‘An American Ideal of Beauty’ is more successful. He understands how the track works and preserves the song while giving the machinery more weight. It is a respectful attitude towards the original that is not usually found in remix albums.
Combichrist gets ‘Butterfly’ and makes it considerably less interested in behaving nicely. It becomes heavier and more aggressive. No one would ever suspect this of being delicate; but then the original was by PIG, so the butterfly could not survive in its entirety anyway.
Rabbit Junk’s ‘Infidel’ is probably the best among the remixes. It sounds like a computer virus that has joined the union and demanded a pension. The track acquires another layer of electronic nastiness without losing the song under it.
That is the problem with remix albums. They usually include just the same song in someone else’s pants. Here, however, there are several instances of treating the material in such a way that it changes how we listen to it.
The question is why Watts continues to do this.
Most musicians with such a long career are busy with promoting their past. They promote anniversaries, boxed sets, and increasingly complicated versions of the album which was good enough the first time. Watts obviously did not receive this memo. He keeps composing the new material and immersing himself in noise.
It is touching.
Not that he would appreciate it.
There is something faintly absurd in the sight of a man trying to audition for a kind of rock star position that England stopped offering somewhere around 1991. Watts has never really fit into the roles available to him. He is too theatrical for the pure industrial, too industrial for rock music, and too wonderfully bizarre to become the respectable elder statesman.
May this continue.
The connection with Alexander McQueen is totally logical. PIG has always known that ugliness can be put into elegant dress and resold to people as luxury. Watts knows how to make the industrial music decadent. The noises are meticulously crafted, the hooks are there, and everything has enough self-confidence not to turn into grey wallpaper.
Dirt Box is not a new and revolutionary step in the history of PIG. It does not have to be. The four original tracks are good, the remixes are different in quality, and Watts continues to seem much more interested in creating the album than in maintaining his reputation.
That is probably why he is still alive.
There is no dignity in rock and roll after fifteen albums. There is only stubbornness, noise, and hopes that the next song will be good enough to be heard.
Watts has managed that.
TRACKLISTING:
01. An American Ideal of Beauty
02. Your Reptilian Overlord Presents
03. Infidel
04. Butterfly
05. Your Reptilian Overlord Presents (Cyanotic remix)
06. An American Ideal of Beauty (Stabbing Westward remix)
07. Butterfly (Combichrist remix)
08. Infidel (Rabbit Junk remix)
LINKS:
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