Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs & Irked @ New Century, Manchester, 11th April 2025

A warm, barmy spring evening saw inevitable traffic jams around Manchester’s wondrous inner city road ring network, but as I walked down to visit New Century, a new venue for me, it felt good to be out and about and watching live music.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs was tonight’s headline act, a band I’ve never really paid too much attention to for one reason or another, but I was intrigued to see what they would produce live.

With the venue filling up nicely, fellow North Easterners Irked ambled onto the stage, and with a slow build up, and singer Helen Walkinshaw kneeling, they began with Repeat Offender. I was stood right behind the sound guy, and we must have been hearing two different things as I could barely make out the vocals for the first few songs; Running, Move and Settle Down, which dampened my enthusiasm for the band.

I did quite enjoy Simon Hubbard’s witty comments in between songs as he chatted about getting older, and if ‘you fancy a chat about your prostate, I’ll be at the back later’, but that’s about as good as it got for me. Vocalist Helen tried to get the crowd involved by jumping into the first few rows during Fuck Friday and we also got an anecdote about bassist Mike believing he had taken some ecstasy when it was in fact Viagra before new single The Hardest Man In Billingham. They ended with their best song Backstreets and disappeared after a quick photo opportunity.

As stated earlier, I wasn’t overly familiar with Pigs x7, but I have friends who’ve seen them before and raved about their live performances, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. On record, I found them OK, some good riffs here and there, but after listening to the classic For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) blasting through the PA, the lights went down, and from the off when they opened with The Wyrm, I could sense something different about them.

The lead intro is excellent, and with singer Matt Baty parading around barefooted and going between front and stage left to play his Korg synth, they felt heavier, more of that stoner metal/psych groove that I prefer. The crowd came to life at the midway point, and with a quick introduction of ‘with a combined weight of 833lbs, the five times heavyweight champions of the world, we are Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs’ as the band crack on with Mr Medicine.

Baty doesn’t talk much in between songs, but I did enjoy listening to his views about The Vengaboys playing ‘Britain’s premier metal festival, Download’ whilst bemoaning the fact that they’ve ‘never played there, probably because they don’t like our name’. I enjoyed his theatrics on stage, shadow boxing along to the heavy drumbeats of Ewan Mackenzie as they blast through Ultimate Hammer, the excellent Reducer, Carousel and Stitches.

Live, they are a completely different beast than on record. The bass sound from John-Michael Joseph Hedley, is phenomenal, and you could feel it shaking the room, whilst the riffs from lead guitarist Adam Ian Sykes are superb and complemented well by Sam Grant. We got a cracking story about playing a festival in Poland last year, as Baty revealed that he was called an arsehole by a member of the crowd who then said, ‘but your band are amazing’. He subsequently introduces them one by one, ‘we have Randy Savage on bass, Rowdy Roddy Piper on drums, Nature Boy Rick Flair on stage right’ with the crowd giving lots of ‘Woooooooo’ shouts, finished off with ‘From Death Valley, The Undertaker on lead guitar’.

We’re then hit with GNT, a huge song from start to finish and the standout of the night for me. It demonstrates the band’s raw power as the crowd became more raucous and surfers started to emerge. World Crust and Big Rig are next up with big Sabbath-esque riffs wrapped around that psych sound. They mix their tempos well throughout this batch of songs, and that bass just gets better and better. ‘Thanks for giving shit about us, and it’s because of you, we exist and have released our 5th album. Did you know that there’s one band who didn’t get to a fifth album, and that’s The Vengaboys’ Baty said with a wry smile as the crowd shout ‘Pigs’ in unison back at them.

We then get the prize draw that they ‘couldn’t advertise after the incident at the Wrexham show last year. It’s the headbanger of the evening award’. Baty walks across to guitarist Adam as he’s the ‘most judgemental person amongst us’ and he picks out the lucky recipient, Charlie, who appears on stage to collect his prize, a cap, which ‘will be worth about a tenner on eBay in a few years’ time’ quips Baty.

‘This song is off our new album, and it’s called Collider’, the crowd bounce along nicely before we get the grand finale, a song ‘about a long, dangerous and very exciting stretch of road in the North East of England called the A66’, and the place erupts. They draw the song out for as long as possible, releasing as much energy as they can summon, to bring an end to a thoroughly enjoyable set. I can say with all certainty that they surprised me tonight, they are so much heavier live than on record and that can only be a good thing.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs

Irked

Scribed by: Matthew Williams
Photos by: Lee Edwards