Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Land of Sleeper

Four albums in, Pigs x7 are far more penetrable, learning over time to be more immediate than, say, their debut consisting of three tracks, each stretching past the 15-minute mark. Nonetheless, their music remains as unkempt and feral as ever, propelled by the sort of chunky Sabbathian riffs that make the chiselled ‘Ultimate Hammer’ and the clattering ‘Mr Medicine’ sound like the Goliath to Royal Blood’s David. However, the album’s discordant slow burner of a centrepiece, ‘The Weatherman’, offers a stark change, bringing in a choir who sing an almost otherworldly, nearly a cappella chant before the band takes the reins again in almost seven minutes of pure doom. It’s eerie, it’s weird, and maybe a tad too long (it could still perhaps work as a three-minute interlude or similar) but regardless, it still somehow manages to feel like Pigs x7 while offering a welcome change. By its last quarter, ‘Land of Sleeper’ feels like it’s said all it can.