PIG - Red Room
Raymond Watts a.k.a. PIG has released his new album 'Red Room' on CD and digitally via Metropolis Records and on vinyl via Armalyte Industries, and will be bringing the album to life through the colossal ‘Heroin For The Damned’ tour with Curse Mackey and Unitcode : Machine. The 40-date itinerary follows a headlining set at Cold Waves XII in Chicago on September 28.
Following the 2022 album ‘The Merciless Light’, ‘Red Room’ is the sound of Watts beating the hammer of hope on the anvil of despair. But, far from being the dying light of decay, this is a spark, an ember and a torch in transition, lighting up the house of PIG before Watts burns it up and blows it down, cutting through yhrscaly rind to PIG's tender heart and soft underbelly.
Earlier, PIG shared the thunderous intro track ‘Crumbs Chaos & Lies’ featuring Alexis Mincolla (3Teeth) with a riveting video by the elusive visionary Ibex, and the lead track ‘Dum Dum Bullet’ with a penetrating video by E Gabriel Edvy for Blackswitch Labs. This anthem features a choir of iconic guests that include Chris Connelly (Revolting Cocks, Ministry), I Ya Toyah, En Esch (KMFDM), Emily Kavanaugh (Night Club), Chris Hall (Stabbing Westward), Burton C Bell (Fear Factory, Ascension of the Watchers) and Marc Heal (Cubanate).
Watts co-wrote much of ‘Red Room’ with Jim Davies of Pitchshifter, best known for his acidic and acerbic guitar lines on many chart hits by The Prodigy. Other guests include Chris Hall (Stabbing Westward), who delivers a soaring vocal performance on ‘The Sick Man's Prayer’, Watts' old KMFDM bandmate Günther Schulz (a.k.a. 'The Czar of Guitar'), who appears on the anthemic ‘Dirty Mercy’, and the great jazz trumpeter Enrico Tomasso (who has worked on and off with Watts for three decades), who brings his deft and delicate touch to ‘PIG Is At The Window’.
Watts has had a stellar career since cutting his teeth in the mid-1980s industrial rock scene as a member of KMFDM. Apart from releasing 14 albums as PIG, he has toured with Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM and Einstürzende Neubauten, written music for fashion and film (Chloe, Marios Schwab, Halston, The Row), and even did sound design for the exhibition 'Punk: Chaos to Couture' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Watts also collaborated with the late fashion icon Alexander McQueen, who commissioned him (with John Gosling) to embellish the serene instrumental track ‘Inside’ (from PIG's 1999 album ‘Genuine American Monster’) for the soundtrack to ‘Plato’s Atlantis’. The show was reprised after McQueen’s untimely death in as the finale of ‘Savage Beauty', a posthumous retrospective that broke all records at both The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
'Red Room' is out now, available on CD and digitally from fine online platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify and Bandcamp. On August 23, PIG will also re-release the seminal album 'Sinsation (Remastered)', originally released in the mid-1990s on Trent Reznor's label Nothing Records.
TOUR DATES (with Curse Mackey and Unitcode : Machine)
9/28/24: Chicago, IL, @ Metro
9/ 29/24: Minneapolis, MN @ Cabooze
9/30/24: Des Moines, IA @ Lefty’s Live Music
10/2/24: Milwaukee, WI @ X-Ray Arcade
10/3/24: Davenport, IA @ Raccoon Motel
10/4/24: Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck
10/5/24: Denver, CO Kulture Music Hall
10/6/24: SLC, UT @ Quarters
10/7/24: Boise, ID @ Visual Arts Collective
10/9/24: Eugene, OR @ John Henry’s
10/10/24: Seattle, WA @ El Corazon
10/13/24: Portland, OR @ Dante’s
10/15/24: Sacramento, CA @ Starlit Room
10/16/24: SF, CA @ DNA
10/17/24: San Diego, CA @ Whistle Stop
10/18/24: Las Vegas, NV @ Sinwave
10/19/24: Los Angeles, CA @ Catch One
10/20/24: Scottsdale, AZ @ Pub Rock
10/21/24: Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
10/23/24: OK City @ Beer City
10/24/24: Dallas, TX @ Three Links
10/26/24: Austin, TX @ Elysium
10/27/24: New Orleans, LA @ Santos
10/29/24: Pensacola, FL @ Handlebar
10/30/24: Orlando, Fl @ Handlebar
11/1/24: West Palm Beach, FL @ Respectable Street
11/2/24: Jacksonville, FL @ Underbelly
11/3/24: Greenville, SC @ Radio Room
11/5/24: Atlanta, GA @ Star Bar
11/6/24: Richmond, VA @ Fallout
11/7/24: Baltimore, MD @ Metro Baltimore
11/8/24: New York, NY @ STIMULATE
11/10/24: Millersville, PA @ Phantom Power
11/12/24: Cambridge, MA @ Middle East
11/13/24: Quebec City, QC @ L’anti Bar
11/14/24: Montreal, QC @ Cabaret Fous
11/15/24: Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
11/16/24: Detroit, MI @ Smalls
11/17/24: Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Tavern
