Tag: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Land of Sleeper

Top 25 albums of 2021 – 2025: #’s 5 – 1

Here we are. The top five albums I reviewed in the last five years. I revised this list of all twenty-five records several times. It wasn’t easy to get here, but here we go.

#5: The Black Angels – Wilderness of Mirrors (2022)

This was a great return for my favorite band. The Black Angels came back in 2022 with anger about the past and hope for the future. It was a psychedelic, heavy reflection on the current times, what came before, and what was looming.

#4: Shame – Drunk Tank Pink (2021)

The album’s name refers to a color that’s often painted in jail cells to calm rowdy people. This post-punk album blends rowdy rage with punk riffs and cutting lyrics about how bonkers the world was back then…and still is.

#3: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Land of Sleeper (2023)

Good heavens, this thing is massive. Pigsx7 unleashed an album that was designed to shake us out of our doldrums and also explore the weird world of dreams and how they merge with reality. It rocketed into my “best of” list for 2023 upon my first listen, and their tour for this was solid.

#2: A Place to Bury Strangers – Synthesizer (2024)

Speaking of albums that landed in my “best of” lists for a particular year and then never moved out of it, how could I not include an album by APTBS that, no joke, you can turn into an actual synthesizer. The album cover is a circuit board. You can create music with this thing. Plus, the whole album shreds. It’s a stunning work that I think only they could imagine and then execute so well.

#1: Matthew Halsall – An Ever Changing View (2023)

I almost didn’t hear this album or discover Halsall’s work. It got buried in a big stack of unread e-mails and press releases and I didn’t open the file until late fall of 2023, not long before I was about to make my “Best of 2023” list. Lo and behold, it was the most beautiful album I’d heard all year. “Ambient jazz” doesn’t describe it well enough. It’s an album that instantly changes the atmosphere around you for the better.

There you have it. Up next, my top twenty-five concerts of the last five years…which was more difficult to determine than this list.

Keep your mind open.

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Review: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Land of Sleeper

What lies in the Land of Sleeper, the new album by Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs? One, heavy riffs. Two, the battle against existential dread and anger, judging by the lyrics. Lead singer Matt Baty has made no secret of how, on the band’s new album, he decided to give in to his urge to sing / scream about deep, dark subjects such as death, sloth, wrath, and how time can easily feel like it’s slipping away with each breath.

The opening guitar riff on “Ultimate Hammer” alone will knock you to the floor and shake you out of any doldrums. They seem intent on awakening us from slumber, both self-induced and imposed upon us by unseen forces. “Life passes by in the blink of an eye,” Baty sings while his bandmates charge at you with guitars and drums that sound like hundreds of band saws. The title of “Terror’s Pillow” alone gives you an idea of the dread Baty feels as he drifts off into sleep, and drummer Ewan Mackenzie‘s cymbal crashes roll over you like an avalanche.

“Big Rig” is the aftershock of that avalanche with John-Michael Hedley‘s bass leading the charge. In it, Baty sings of the grit and grime (both literal and metaphorical) that covers their hometown of Newcastle Upon Tyne, but how an old tree inspires him to keep on keepin’ on (“At times it withers, but come spring, it soldiers on.”). “The Weatherman” is downright spooky with its chant-like opening vocals and creepy guitar work by Adam Ian Sykes. “There’s a storm coming!” Baty yells. If this is the sound of an impending storm, then that storm is going to wipe towns off the map once it arrives.

“Mr. Medicine” is a song of love and hope amid the pressures of the modern world, believe it or not (“That song you sang to me made me feel strong and completely fearless.”), and “Pipe Down!” is a great example of how Sykes and producer / fellow guitarist Sam Grant often trade shredding duties back and forth in the same song.

“Atlas Stone” is a song about carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, and the band amplifies this message with crushing, heavy riffs. The closer, “Ball Lightning,” takes them, and us, into psychedelic doom landscapes as dark wizards plot alliances with unholy things that live in deep trenches and a band of five warriors from Newcastle Upon Tyne decide to take up their axes, swords, crossbows, shields, and mystical scrolls to, again, do battle for the sake of all of us.

I urge you to follow them into, through, and out of the Land of Sleeper. You’ll come out of the journey with a newfound power.

Keep your mind open.

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