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Class 6(66)
Righteous Pigs: Stress related
31/07/09 || Habakuk
Introduction
You think Repulsion sound filthy? They do, but this is worse. Quite literally, actually. Rarely have I heard an enjoyable album that is executed in such a dirty, strange, bad, and musically immature way. You know, four people that don’t really know how to play their instruments/growl/sing/make lunch in the “correct” way come together, stir their shit up a little bit and somehow make it work. They probably don’t know what they’re doing, but they want to sound brutal and what they lack in skill they make up for in spirit, passion and youth energy. Sounds like Napalm Death and “Scum”? In theory it does, but this here stems from a totally different background. Nevada, USA, to be exact. Soundwise it doesn’t resemble Birmingham’s filthiest all that much, but they do fit together in terms of the overall attitude conveyed on their contemporary albums. As you might have already guessed, the genre we’re in would probably be classified as grind, but just because this has giant ‘We don’t give a fuck’ written all over it and is definitely way to heavy to be punk.
Actually, on this album, Righteous Pigs do have a slight idea of what they’re doing. If they hadn’t, they’d have produced another “Live & learn” (which hides some gems in a giant unlistenable, muddy pile of shit). Luckily, though, they fired their drummer somewhere in between the forerunner and this and hired a guy that at least could hold a steady rhythm, sort of. As a result, this album does a little better, but most of the guys are still the same, so don’t expect a music school lesson. If they ever had a music teacher, he killed himself after hearing “Stress related”. If he survived the predecessor, that is.
Songwriting
6. The songs are way too long for this to be a standard grind album, but this is not exactly a full-on blastfest anyway. Most titles finish round about two and a half minutes and rely more on groove rather than speed. This is no tame stuff though, because all the musical ingredients mashed together produce a pretty aggressive and restless sound, since riffs, song parts and pace happen to change all of a sudden over and over again. Instead of pulling their parts off in orderly fashion, the ‘ Pigs just continue to throw new stuff at you constantly. The result is an immature, pretty varied but nasty slab of down-tuned, energetic music covering the entire scale from catchy to chaotic.
Production
4. Yeah right… I’d be inclined to say no production, but that’s wrong since the sound is better than on “Live & learn”. Which doesn’t say much. Anyway, it may be alright if you set your standards rather low and crank your sound system up. At least one can hear the guitar, drums and vocals. The last two are actually quite upfront in the mix, while the guitars are quiet but actually don’t sound all too bad. You’ll have to get used to the drums though, and the snare sound definitely makes some drum parts sound extremely strange, although it’s alright during most patterns. So yeah, it’s a pretty shitty production but it does have some morbid charm, including things like accidental panning of the guitar to one channel only on ‘Boundaries unknown’ for a few seconds (2.37) or somebody apparently knocking shit over during the recording (0.59), etc.. And did I mention the bass? No? Good.
Guitars
8. Working the six strings in question is Mitch Harris of later days Napalm Death fame. This is where they picked him up from, which was a fucken genius move considering he helped them create the almighty “Harmony corruption”. He’s all over the place on this album and basically does whatever he wants, grinding and swirling up and down the fretboard with his thin but surprisingly crunchy guitar tone, powerchording his way through punkish progressions and mixing in some metallic accentuations, palm-muting and triplet shredding. Weird, off-the-hook stuff, but done right, and it’s nothing short of genius. It comes out of nowhere like at 1:05 in “Sickened by his own existence” when he morphs a blasting grind riff into an intricately grooving beast or the awesome buildup that follow the chorus around 0:52 in “Eulogy”. This is the sort of shit that makes you freak out due to an overdose of speedy groove mania. All that is crowned with some awkward sounding melodies (meant in a good way, sort of) and hideously ugly solos (meant in a bad way) that are few and far between, luckily.
Vocals
5. When you start listening to the album, song number one greets you with vocals that are growled all the way. Through, but that’s just the first song. After that, it all turns to weirdness deluxe. This guy clearly had no idea what he was doing. Now Mitch Harris seemingly does whatever he wants on guitar, but it works because the rest of the music is built around it. Not so the vocals, because Joe Caper actually manages to add another layer of randomness on top of it. Whacked out, angry and comprehensible snarling that at times even fits the rhythm, on some occasions turning into an ugly deep semi-growl for a syllable or two, then again shifting to raspy screams… It’s really hard to speak of vocal technique here, the guy just spits his guts out in every way that occurred fitting to him at that particular moment. Sometimes it works wonders, sometimes it’s just plain weird. I’ve seen Mitch Harris credited for vocals a couple of times, but I can’t find any of his trademark high screeching anywhere on this.
Bass
4. As indicated before, you can’t really hear it let alone make out anything that strays away from the guitars. If you really try hard and wear headphones, you might be able to make out something very low that’s playing in the fishbowl in the room next to the recording studio. The beginning of ‘Fly the friendly skies’ is a good point to start.
Drums
6. I can only stress this again, good thing they got this drummer, the old one was downright terrible. Alan Strong (Raurgh!) is still hard to appreciate, since he’s also quite sloppy and not always flowing perfectly (check out “Boundaries unknown” at 2:50 for a laugh. This is the third strange reference to this song, so I guess it’s basically a must), plus he’s and not at all flattered by the production, but to me he’s a lot of fun to listen to. He’s got some groove, he’s got some “interesting” timings and patterns and he’s not exactly playing by the book. We do get some blast-beatish stuff, punk-like d-beats with some extra snare and very very few (if any) “standard” patterns.
Lyrics
6. Dealing with drugs, war, crime, society, you name it. They’re very nihilistic and at times quite good, but sometimes just downright hilarious:
Casualty affects the human race
Air travel turns to a disgrace
Fly the friendly skies
Gruesome way to die
With the ground collide
Down the bodies come
Loss of our loved ones
Survivors there are none
Go through their wallets
We don’t give a shit
Lets find the luggage
Right…
Cover art
3. What? This absolutely doesn’t fit the album which is about as far removed from any kind of science-fiction as possible. Or maybe they were just looking for something random and ugly?
Logo
0. I have the re-release CD with “Live & learn” that doesn’t feature a booklet, if I recall correctly.
Overall and ending rant
If I were to give a personal preference, I’d probably give it an 8, but I tried to be objective for a change. An 8 would be greatly misleading, as I can’t really recommend this for its musical brilliance, although there are some great tunes to be found. However, “Stress related” is rightfully in the Class666-section due to its oddity factor as well as its historical and definitely some comic value. Imagine Venom playing pre-grind: They’ve got attitude, it’s all a bit dumb and at times it’s hard to appreciate, but if you’re sold for old school grind anyway, you might take a great deal of liking in this and you should have at least heard this. If you aren’t, it will probably make a terrible starting point into the genre, though.
- Information
- Released: 1990
- Label: Nuclear blast
- Website: Righteous Pigs MySpace
- Band
- Joe Caper: vocals
- Mitch Harris: guitars
- Stephen Chiatovich: bass
- Alan Strong: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Eulogy
- 02. Boundaries unknown
- 03. Open wound
- 04. Turmoil
- 05. Stress related
- 06. Overdose
- 07. Sickened by his own existence
- 08. Fly the friendly skies
- 09. Crack under pressure
- 10. Ruinous dump
- 11. Incarcerated
- 12. Manson klan
