As part of our Suede30 campaign, alongside the newly-remastered editions of the #1 debut album, Demon Records release Suede’s first four singles as highly collectable 7” picture discs, reproducing the original arresting cover images on the discs.

The second release is another absolute classic, “Metal Mickey”, originally released on Nude Records on 14th September 1992, and to this day one of many highlights of a Suede concert. It reached number 17 in the UK charts, earning the band their first appearance on Top Of The Pops, and paving the way for the release of the band’s debut album.

B-side “Where The Pigs Don’t Fly” did not appear on the “Suede” album.

Seven is the magic number. Indeed, not only do psychologists theorise that the human brain can only memorise a sequence of this length, but Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - the Newcastle-based maximalists whose riffs, raw power and rancour have blazed a trail across the darker quarters of the underground in the last five years - have made a second album in King Of Cowards which does its damnedest to take consciousness to its very limits. Moreover, another notable seven is dealt with here - that of the deadly sins. As vocalist and synth player Matt Baty notes “For a long time I’ve questioned how and where guilt can be used as a form of oppression. When can guilt be converted into positive action?

After typing all of the lyrics up I realised I’d unwittingly referenced every one of the seven deadly sins throughout the album. That’s my fire and brimstone Catholic upbringing coming into play there!” Building on the momentum this band has built since their January 2017 debut Feed The Rats, this opus sees them entering a new phase as a sleeker and still more dangerous swineherd. The Iggy-esque drive to dementia, Sabbath-esque squalor and Motörhead-style dirt may still be present and correct, yet the songs are leaner, the long-drawn-out riff-fests sharpened into addictive hammerblows and the nihilistic dirges of yore alchemically transformed into an uplifting and inviting barrage of hedonistic abandon.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which” So George Orwell noted at the end of a certain slim volume. King Of Cowards is nothing less than just such a metamorphosis, one in which - in a blur of primal urges and beastly physicality - this band shows us just which animals are really in charge of the farm. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I could imagine that this is seven pigs, if and only if pigs were capable of sporting a guitar / bass / duo of drumsticks and using them to smash out an epic conceptual behemoth centred around the seven sins and sounding like a metal freight train smashing into a mountain at full speed. I've not heard of that being the case, so I can only assume these are super-human musical beings and not their fleshy porcine counterparts.

TRACK LISTING

1. GNT
2. Shockmaster
3. A66
4. Thumbsucker
5. Cake Of Light 
6. Gloamer

Whether inhabiting the realm of dreams or nightmares, the primordial drive of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs is more powerful than ever and ‘Land Of Sleeper’, their fifth record in a decade of rancour and revelation is testimony to this. Arguably the most potent and assured record of their storied life so far, it’s the product of a band energised and fortified by their individual passions to incendiary effect. After the travails of the two and a half years since 2020’s ‘Viscerals’, ‘Land Of Sleeper’ sees the Newcastle-based quintet not so much reinvigorated as channelling a furious drive which only appears to gather momentum as the band’s surroundings spins on their axis.

For all that the last few years have seen Pigs’ stature rise in the wake of triumphant festival slots and sold-out venues like, this remains a band fundamentally incapable of tailoring their sound to a prospective audience, rather standing alone and impervious as a monument of catharsis.“Certainly for me, writing and playing music is often surprising and revealing, it can be like holding up a mirror and seeing things you didn’t expect to see” reckons drummer Ewan Mackenzie, whose return to the Pigs fray after two albums away marked another big influence on the new record. “For me, the darker tracks on the record hold in common a determination not to lose faith, despite the odds”

The better to unite slumber and waking, ‘Land Of Sleeper’ is no less than an act of transcendence for Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - new anthems to elucidate a world sleepwalking to oblivion.

'Land Of Sleeper come housed in eye-popping 'Callum Rooney' sleeve art with obi strip and 'Oz' style lyrics poster.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The unstoppable Pigs x7 return for a more expansive blast of their gritty sludge-rock, swimming with groove but edging into darker climes. It's a confident and psychedelic blast from one of the greatest bunch of noise merchants in the game.

TRACK LISTING

01. Ultimate Hammer
02. Terror's Pillow
03. Big Rig
04. The Weatherman
05. Mr Medicine
06. Pipe Down!
07. Atlas Stone
08. Ball Lightning 

The first vinyl pressing since 1983 on double blue vinyl with new liner notes. Ripe for rediscovery the sought-after and much acclaimed debut album from seminal Birmingham post punk revolutionaries The Nightingales. This newly expanded ‘Pigs On Purpose’ is remastered by Stuart Moxham with the addition of early demos and non-album singles from this period. The reissue coincides with new ‘King Rocker’ documentary celebrating the life of lead singer Robert Lloyd – a film by Michael Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast Of London), comedian Stewart Lee and James Nicholls (Fire Films, Fire Records).

An early punk classic, The Nightingales' debut was a strange transmission released as the musical landscape was changing. They were the last important band with roots in the first blossoming of punk and became a major influence upon the explosion of mid-80s indie labels and associated bands.

“A perfect example of out-of-sync genius” AllMusic

“Robert Lloyd's deadpan, elegantly hilarious lyrics make Sistine Chapel shapes of mundane provincial minutiae.” The Times

“When it comes to outsider artists, Robert Lloyd is the living embodiment of the term.” Record Collector

TRACK LISTING

SIDE 1

1 Blood For Dirt
2 Start From Scratch
3 One Mistake
4 Well Done Underdog
5 The Crunch
6 The Hedonists Sigh
7 It Lives Again

SIDE 2

8 Make Good
9 Don't Blink
10 Joking Apart
11 Yeah, It's Okay
12 Use Your Loaf
13 Blisters

SIDE 3

14 Bristol Road Leads To Dachau (demo)
15 Hark My Love (demo)
16 Nowhere To Return (demo)
17 Blisters (demo)
18 Idiot Strength
19 Seconds

SIDE 4

20 The Crunch (demo)
21 The Hedonists Sigh (demo)
22 Inside Out
23 Under The Lash
24 Paraffin Brain
25 Elvis, The Last Ten Days

Bonus Tracks On DL Only

1 My Brilliant Career (live)
2 Which Hi-Fi? (live)
3 Paraffin Brain (live)
4 Use Your Loaf (live)

“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig” reasoned George Bernard Shaw. “You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” True to form, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have left the wiser of us aware that they are no band to be messed with. This is made manifest on ‘Viscerals’, their third proper, and an enormous leap forward in confidence, adventure and sheer intensity even from their 2018 breakthrough ‘King Of Cowards’.

Incisive in its riff-driven attack, infectiously catchy in its songcraft and more intrepid than ever in its experimental approach, ‘Viscerals’ is the sound of a leaner, more vicious Pigs, and one with their controls set way beyond the pulverising one-riff workouts of their early days. Yet Pigsx7 have effortlessly broadened their horizons and dealt with all these new avenues without sacrificing one iota of their trademark eccentricity, and the personality of this band has never been stronger, whether on the Sabbathian and philosophical warcry of ‘Reducer’, the debauched, Jane’s Addiction-tinged swagger of ‘Rubbernecker’, the Melvins vs Sonic Youth demoltion derby of ‘New Body’ or even the demented MBV-meets-Twisted-Sister party-banger from hell that is ‘Crazy In Blood’.

“We’re a peculiar bunch of people - a precarious balance of passion, intensity and the absurd” notes vocalist Matt Baty. Such is the unstoppable character of this unique and ever-porcine outfit; still the hungriest animals at the rock trough.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: There's little more fitting for our times than the grooving, distorted assault of Pigsx7. Encompassing the political leanings of hardcore and punk with the crisp, glacial distortion of more modern metal and the snarling vox of garage rock, all imbued with the cleverly written and melodically astute compositions of perfect rocking indie, the Pigs have once again proven that they have something to say, and you'll hear it whether you're listening or not (you should be listening).

TRACK LISTING

01. Reducer
02. Rubbernecker
03. New Body
04. Blood And Butter
05. World Crust
06. Crazy In Blood
07. Halloween Bolson
08. Hell's Teeth