Sunday 24 May 2015

Prehistoric Pigs - Everything Is Good (Album Review)

Everything is Good cover art

Album Type: Album
Date Released: April 26th 2015
Label: The Smoking Goat Records

Everything Is Good - Track Listing:

1.Everything is Good I 08:30
2.Universally Droning 06:52
3.Red Fields 05:13
4.Shut Up, It's Raining Yolks 06:06
5.When The Trip Ends 10:02
6.Hypnodope 09:08
7.Zug 04:03
8.Everything is Good II 07:36

Members

Juri Tirelli – guitar
Jacopo Tirelli – bass
Mattia Piani – drums

Bio:

Prehistoric Pigs are a trio formed by brothers Juri (guitar) and Jacopo Tirelli (bass), and by their cousin Mattia Piani (drums). The band was formed in 2012 as a direct prosecution of the jam sessions that the 3 guys used to have for a lot of years. Prehistoric Pigs play an instrumental stoner rock, with doom, space and psychedelic influences. Their heavy, rough and distorted sound merge with Hendrixian solos, Kyuss style riffs and krautrock melodies. The lysergic and ipnotic atmospheres evoked by their music lead straight to the Californian desert, and then float to the obscurity of Uranus skies and collapse to the deepest bowels of the Earth. Prehistoric Pigs published their first album “Wormhole Generator” in the end of 2012, with Moonlight Records. After a lot of concerts in North Italy, they exported their music abroad playing in festivals and clubs in Slovenia, Germany, Austria and Ireland. In the summer of 2014, a “Split” with the irish band Electric Taurus has been released by Go Down Records. After a series of gigs all over Italy, and subsequently to the deal with The Smoking Goat Records, Prehistoric Pigs are now getting ready for the release of their second full length, expected for the spring of 2015.

Review:

Instrumental rock, be it stoner like the Prehistoric Pigs or proggy like The Bakerton Group, is a tough nut to crack but I have to admit the boys pull it off well with their new disc “Everything is Good.”

Everything is Good I” opens the record. It’s heavy enough to get your attention but not enough to overwhelm. The vibe begins to change mid-song slowing down, moving into classic Pigs trippy soundscapes picking back up again, dropping the axe and turning up the volume. Great way to start the record.

Track two, “Universally Droning,” opens with a Fu Manchu like fuzz chord that leads into a full out wall of heavy sound, the kind of thing you swear you can reach out and touch, it’s that solid, that fierce. There’s a brief interlude of spaced out weirdness that leads you into the storm, churning out a power chord maelstrom guaranteed to knock you out of your chair. And when you think you just can’t take it any longer the Pigs take it down a notch, offering mercy in the form of a Sabbathy, doomy outro to the song.

Red Fields” begins acoustic, quiet, almost reserved leading into another wall of fuzzed out sound that seemingly drops right on your head, going back acoustic as if to prove that there is such a thing as “quiet heaviness,” something I discovered a long time ago with Blue Cheer and Saint Vitus. And then I hear old echoes of Kyuss coming through near the end of the track against an outro of muffled distortion.

Shut up it’s Raining Yolks” immediately becomes the most experimental song of the record. I think it’s safe to say I enjoyed this track the most since it screamed psychedelia to me, evoking images of Paisley prints and Patchouli incense sticks in a style only the Pigs could pull off, somewhere between pre supernova and post lunar landscape.

When the Trip Ends” slows the tempo of the record down, moving back into “quiet heaviness” I mentioned earlier. And it’s a song like this that really makes me appreciate how well how the Prehistoric Pigs have this amazing grasp of what the concept and definition of “heavy” truly means. They get it. They have it figured out. They understand how to create sonic textures, how to create moods and atmospheres and get that across to the listener without the aid of vocals, through music alone. That’s talent, that’s a gift.

Hypnodope” begins with down tuned chords so rich and thick it’ll hurt your brain trying to understand how the Pigs can do it and not trigger massive earthquakes and tsunamis in the process. Throughout the tune are strange hushed whispers that permeate the background of “Hypnodope,” disembodied voices that float back and forth, swept up in the ebb and flow of the music, caught in the undertow, appearing then disappearing, all without warning. Of all the songs on this record this one probably has the most ominous, unsettling feel to it.

The second to last song, “Zug,” goes straight groovy with a quasi-Trouble / Sabbath boogie tilt to it, worshipping at the altar of Iommi, Wagner and Chandler leading into the final track of the record, “Everything is Good II” taking that same approach that track one had properly ending the record as it started.

If you dig solid, heavy, fuzzed out instrumental rock you’ll really appreciate what the Prehistoric Pigs have accomplished with “Everything is Good” but getting past a band without vocals can be a hard one. My advice to you: Give it a shot. After a while you won’t even notice what you think you might be missing. Buy this record.

Words by Theron Moore

Thanks To Marco at Metaversus PR for the promo. Everything Is Good is now available to buy on CD/DD now.

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