Matthew Baty opened the gate and his Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs escaped to the lighter side of heavy rock. Beautifully balanced between “desperately crushing” and “some kind of levity” Pigs x7 go hog wild with their latest album Land of Sleeper. After touring for the release of their 2020 album Viscerals was postponed due to Covid-19, they’ve been set free again to run amuck, channeling the sonic seriousness of Black Sabbath and the quirky campiness of Queen. Baty says their music is the “gateway drug to much heavier and darker music” and after listening to their latest effort, I’m mainlining their music.
mxdwn: I’m Ric Leczel, a feature writer with mxdwn.com. I’m here with lead singer Matthew Baty from Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, known as Pigs x7. Thank you. I really appreciate your time. How are you today?
Matthew Baty: I’m okay, I’ve had a strange week, tough week actually. You know when you have a friend and like, kind of coached him through life and everything seems nice and good and then you know, your snow globe gets picked up and someone shakes it and everything goes everywhere. Yeah. I’m in one of those moments in life now. Basically, I’ve got a friend and a colleague who’s really not well. It’s all very, very sudden.
mxdwn: Well, I’ll keep him in my prayers. I appreciate you taking the time out at this stressful moment to talk to us about your music.
MB: Oh, it’s OK. I mean, [I’m] doing things, just enjoying life and experience. And it just things like this do happen from time to time. Yeah, you gotta keep moving.
mxdwn: Yeah, keep moving. My Great-Grandmother used to say you don’t enjoy the good if you know the bad.
MB: Yeah, yeah.
mxdwn: Let’s talk a little bit about your music. I’ve been delving into the Pig’s universe the last couple of days. My favorite way to listen to my interview subjects is to put on my headphones and lay on my bed with my feet up on my headboard like I did when I was, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. You get a different experience from that, I think, especially with your music. Wow. Some of your songs are really intense.
MB: Yeah, yeah.
mxdwn: I’m going to read the first question off your latest album Land of Sleep. It delves into existential themes and introspective lyrics, and explores and makes sense of life’s complex questions and emotions — kind of like what you’re going through right now. Does your creative process help you channel some of these emotions that you have?
MB: Yeah, it’s channeling. It’s an interesting word isn’t it and to a degree, that’s it very much. It feels like part of the process because I don’t sit down when I’m writing lyrics or when we’re writing in the studio and have any sort of ideas on topics or themes that I want to explore. I just kind of… I’ll sit down and whether I’ve got like a rough recording of the song, I listen to the music and sit with headphones on. I’ll just listen to it on repeat, and some days some things all just kind of like flow quite naturally out than some other days. It’s like, okay, there’s nothing coming for this one and I’ll have to kind of keep going back to it until something clicks. Sometimes with certain songs, there’s only a few words or very short phrases that will come to mind as I’m listening. I’ll just write those down, and then over time I’ll fill in the spaces. It starts to become a little bit more coherent. It’s an interesting process for me because quite often, once I kind of finish them I get a general sense of whether I’m kind of happy with them or not. And if I’m not, if I feel like, oh I don’t know, if the wording there maybe feels a little bit too bright or a little bit too normal or basic — I like to find something a little bit more interesting. But I do get a sense of whether I’m, you know, it feels accomplished or not. And at that point, I can still be clearer about what certain lyrics are particularly about. Sometimes I’ll read them back and I’ll go oh, yeah, that’s probably about that situation. That headspace I was in around that particular time, but other times it could take months. I like reflect a little bit and go oh, that’s it! It’s sometimes difficult. So many things are going on at any given moment in time and all of them, their emotions surrounding those, it’s quite difficult sometimes to realize you know, the things that are going on and it sometimes just takes some time for a realization to emerge. Sometimes I need a magnifying glass too. So, it’s what you’re saying with the lyrics. I think there are… there is a bit of a time stamp.
mxdwn: Yeah, I love that answer. It’s organic, I mean that, that means that the music is organic, it’s not structured in a way that’s leading you down a path. It sounds more open-ended, but that leads me to my next my next thought. My next question, I mean you’ve described your left field music which I love. Your band stands out for this, this unique blend of heavy riffs, and hypnotic soundscapes. It’s this massive wall of just sonic thunder. But then when you start cutting apart your lyrics, I mean, when I’m looking at the lyrics of Atlas Stone, that’s touchingly vulnerable. But then you’ve got this massive pounding in your head, then your heart is like, I’m breaking. I mean, it just sounds like that’s who you guys are.
MB: Yeah, it is. I mean, I think. We find a great amount of catharsis in what we do, and I often say that the mind is a really noisy place. By creating our own noise, we can face it in our own space, kind of enjoy and almost feel comfortable. I’ve always had that from heavy music, though, listening to it. I’ve never understood when people listen to heavy rock music and it’s not something that they enjoy after all, but they kind of say, well, that’s just noise and they see it as a challenge. Whereas I always embrace it and I find it almost a bit…. it helps me cancel out a lot of the noise that’s going on internally inside my own head. You can kind of just get lost in this sound that just feels so captivating to me and that’s, that was always the way with our band, to create that for ourselves, you know, so we could get together every week, and after an hour playing this music and not harbor a single thought. You know it makes you really present and closer to put you into that headspace where it does feel very, very therapeutic.
mxdwn: Yeah. No, I felt that the other night with the headphones and I was listening to some of your 13- or 15-minute songs. It’s just that you almost go numb and all that pressure of all your crap in your life goes away so you’re getting that point across — it’s like you beat the pain out of people just so they can enjoy themselves.
MB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind. Yeah. Well, I’m glad that you experienced that.
mxdwn: I gotta talk about a couple of things. I read an interview that you had at the Raw Power Festival back in 2022 and they asked you a great question for an interviewer who was at a festival. If you curated a festival lineup, what would it be? You said Gary Numan, Stevie Nicks, Miley Cyrus, Black Sabbath, and Anna Von Hausswolf.
MB: I pay. I’m in. I’ll pay money.
mxdwn: The first album I ever bought was Sabbath Bloody Sabbath because of the artwork. I was 13 years old, and it was just the coolest thing on Earth.
MB: You know, people are recklessly ranking Sabbath albums, but it’s probably a close second of mine. I really love that album and it’s not one that people usually pick, you know. Yeah, there’s something really great about it. There’s a different production as well on that album that kind of makes it stand out. Yeah, I love it.
mxdwn: So let me ask you this though, your live performances, I just watched your concerts. I’m looking at a picture that somebody sent me from Chicago off their phone, and you’re joking about being the worst Queen tribute band ever, and you’re the Globetrotters of rock. I mean, you don’t take yourself too seriously. The music is serious, but you sound like you are having a lot of fun up there.
MB: Well, I think as a kind of expression. I mean you can only take yourself so seriously when you’ve got one name like ours, I guess. I mean, I’m sure a lot of people discover our band just through our band name alone, especially when we play festivals. They might be looking at the schedule or the lineup and they’ll go… I think we should go and see what this what it’s all about. They’ll go along, and they’ll watch. I quite often get this feedback about our headline gigs as well. People will come up to me and say they don’t know a lot about our world and music, but they came across our band and I absolutely love it. I think that’s quite nice. You know, I sometimes say that we’re the gateway drug to much heavier and darker music than ours. But there is some kind of levity to our music as well. I think we have our moments where it is just desperately crushing and that’s by design, but yeah, in quite a lot of it there is levity, and it is a bit celebratory. I think when I’m addressing audiences at our shows, like I don’t really want to pander to the expected kind of front person of a heavy rock band. Tropes where I’m kind of screaming at the audience to address them and calling them motherfuckers and stuff like that. That’s not me, though. That’s not my personality.
mxdwn: Very self-deprecating.
MB: Ha-ha! Yes.
mxdwn: Which is, I think, part of the vulnerability I just spoke about in your lyrics, you put yourself out there. There is a certain vulnerability in that, and you kind of want people to like you. So let me ask. Where did the name come from? I grew up on a pig farm, so I’m very partial to pigs and I think they’re great.
MB: It came from a long list of probably equally preposterous, fun names and it shows that one, we’re stuck with it now. There’s no going back, but yeah, Johnny and I, we were in the recording studio in Newcastle, where we live, and visiting the new recording British band at the time, that sounded very much like others and had run its course. So a lot of interpersonal things going on there. It wasn’t a very fun environment to be in, we took a few minutes time out and we just took like a year off. We were like, right, okay, this is it. You can start a new band. We’re going to have the most fun with it. So it was just one of those and its stuck.
mxdwn: I just watched a bunch of your videos, the official videos. I’m looking at your merch and your graphics right now on my other monitor. Your album cover for Land of Sleeper. You know, you could drop some acid on that and look at it for 15 hours. How is it tied into your vision? How does that visual representation go with the audio?
MB: Fortunately for us, because the guys that were our record label, they’re also graphic designers as well. So, they’re always on Instagram, and just kind of coming across other designers that they love or are inspired by. They’re always kind of . . . whenever it comes around to the album time, we’ll converse with them, and we’ll say look, you know, this is what we’re thinking. We usually have an idea, a framework of the direction we want to go in. With Land of Sleeper, we’ve got the ’70s sci-fi novel sort of look to it. It went from there. We usually like to share some key lyrics from throughout the different songs on the album, with the designer. Then usually what we end up doing, which must be a bit of a nightmare to work with, because we give them these briefs and then they’ll come back to us. By this point we’ve already been quite selective and they’ll come back and then we’ll go, yeah, they’ve pretty much nailed it. Let’s just take them off the beaten track a bit and kind of make it — can you make it a bit weirder? So we know that we said ’70s sci-fi, but can we go in a slightly different direction just so it doesn’t look . . . I think the end result gives it a more unique feel, rather than kind of just looking at it and saying “Oh, that’s a ’70s sci-fi novel.”
mxdwn: Yeah, no, this is pretty deep with the with the crescent moon, the little guy looking, the bodies and the tree. There’s a lot of elements there.
MB: In terms of what Colin came up with, all of that, like all the credit goes to hi. Really. Because yeah, we just give them a framework of the kind of the direction we like to go in visually, and here’s the kind of context on our lyrics and away they go.
mxdwn: Like that Sabbath cover for me. When I was 12 or 13 years old. You know, I cook a lot, half the meals are eaten with the eye. This is kind of what this is like. The presentation is not just an afterthought. It’s something visually arresting. It stops you. Then you put on the music and you’re like there is a real connection there.
MB: Yeah, and what I like about a lot of the artwork that we’ve done, but I think Colins’ in particular is, I think there’s a general reflection of what our music does as well because, for some people on the surface of things, we’re just like, their really loud, obnoxious rock band — which they’ve been correct in that assessment of it. But spend some time with our music, I think, and scratch the surface a little bit, the more that you do that, the more detail may emerge, whether that’s through the lyrics or production, so some RSP there. He engineers and he produces our albums as well and he’s just done some wonderful things in making our recording sound engaging. For example, in London Sleeper you may not need to hear it but what’s present throughout a lot of the album is a piano that’s backing up a lot of the riffs.
mxdwn: I noticed that.
MB: And it’s just like . . . it is just really kind of small details that create this quite big thing with lots of little details. A lot of the artwork that we’ve been fortunate enough to have, they have done for us, does the same thing. The more you look at it, the base of it, it’s a really striking image. But then when you look at it in a little bit more detail, little things kind of pop out like little faces and things like that. And the music is quite similar in that sense.
mxdwn: I think what it does for me is it takes away the a la carte feel. Some albums have and you know there’s one song produced by one guy and then another engineer on another song and it it feels very piecemeal on an album. What I’ve been listening to, especially Land of Sleeper, really rolls together like that piano and there are some refrains. There are some common touchstones, there’s a little foreshadowing and there’s a little looking back from song to song. Now, “Mr. Medicine,” that video to me, that monster at the end, seems like, I don’t know a representation. Maybe what we just went through with Covid-19, medicine, on masking all of that, and it kind of just swallowed up society. It felt really timely.
MB: Yeah, I can’t really take too much credit for that either. I’m talking myself out of a job. (laughs)
mxdwn: Just show up and sing.
MB: It worked out brilliantly again, I think. I think it’s important for us to present videos like that, you know, so they’re not so intense. They do reflect this kind of like, characteristic that our band has. This kind of weird sort of surrealist humor. Yeah, they totally ran with that aesthetic and we’re really pleased with that. There are other videos, quite a lot of them, that we kind of film ourselves. We do think quite long and hard about the approach, getting it to work, I think it’s really important for them to understand the bands’ character. Not everyone does, you know. For some people we are just a highly obnoxious rock band with a stupid name (laughs). But yeah, I think there’s a lot more detail than people find, or see or appreciate. And those people that do kind of get it, appreciate it.
mxdwn: Yeah, I think so. And you know that leads me to your fan base. Your fan base is rabid, loyal, and fanatical. I mean, they love you, talk about you, and support you. How does the band feel going through COVID, being separated, not touring, and then getting back out there? Is it just overjoying? A lot of a lot of people are talking about that on tour.
MB: Yeah! It’s been phenomenal. What’s been particularly nice about this year, because obviously when the album before this one came out, it came out a few weeks into the first lockdown. So everything was still, like the landscape of everything, was still, in terms of releasing music, but also very frightening on a societal scale as well.
mxdwn: Yeah.
MB: It remained that way for a while, and it was all very strange. We didn’t get to tour for the album until like 18 months after it being released. For me the biggest joy of all about releasing new music is speaking to people about it by itself, and I like reading reactions too, especially if they’re positive reactions to the music (laughs heartily), but nothing compares to being in front of people at shows and that’s, that’s the reason we started the band in the first place . . . the whole community of live music. That goes for everyone from the venue managers, you know when you first get to the venue, or the sound engineers and chatting with them and then, hopefully, to the people from the show. We do a lot of our own merch table stuff and that’s because we like to chat to people who’ve been to the show and who spend money, who listen to our music, that’s the most rewarding thing for me. But not being able to do that for 18 months, with that album, I’ve got a different relationship with it than to all the others. With this one, this one felt extra special because like straight away, we were able to release the album and then straight out on tour and going to places that we’ve not been before, like the US. We did have a few tours booked to the US for 2020.
mxdwn: That fell through huh?
MB: For these opportunities to still be there for us made us feel really really blessed.
mxdwn: I imagine for you guys working the merch table, boy, there’s no more direct feedback than that. You know, when you hear from people like, oh, that shirt sucks or no, I like that one. I mean, and they, they may not know who you are.
MB: This happens and usually most people are quite kind. It depends on what country we’re in. Especially in mainland Europe. In certain countries, they can be very, very direct, they’re very forthcoming with their opinions. It’s like, wow, “I used to like your older material, this new stuff, not so much.” (much laughter)
mxdwn: Yeah, you’re just like, “Okay I quit — thanks.”
MB: I like that. You know, it’s like, it’s all kind of, they say it with a wry smile, and then I take their money for the merch. So, who’s the real winner? (laughing)
mxdwn: Yeah, that’s so funny because I think I read something about the record store, that you guys started in some kind of record store you guys were associated with in the past. I can’t remember.
MB: Our guitarist runs a recording studio in Newcastle, which is where we kind of always rehearsed and recorded our music. Maybe that’s it.
mxdwn: Yeah. Do you still live in your hometown? Are you guys still all in the same place?
MB: Yeah. Yeah. Quite a shame, a lot of things are slowly changing. For a while, over the past couple of decades anyway, whenever anyone found any level of success through music in Newcastle, in the north east of England, then they would usually move down to London. Yeah, I love it up here. It’s great. In fact, I find living in London to be hell, to be honest. It’s nice up here. People are friendly, living costs are a lot less than they are in London. So, it works.
mxdwn: Does living there still help your creative process? Do you look back where you started and draw some energy from that? I’m looking at a question about your albums — Feed the Rats, King of Cowards. They got a lot of critical attention. How does that success in the past drive you forward? Do you compete with that? Do you compete with yourself?
MB: It’s a funny one because in the past, the expectations up to where our music should take us or where we should be at any particular moment in time, we found that with hindsight, only really breeds resentment. You don’t ever feel any kind of content and enjoy things as they are. I think with our band, with kids, we’re certainly all in that kind of mindset, where we’re like, whoa, Jesus Christ. We never thought we’d be touring in America or we’re going to Australia later this year. I mean, holy hell no. None of us, even at the start of this year, like none of us saw Australia come in. You know, and yeah, it’s strange because I guess we still have ambition and I think it’s important to have that. But it’s more just about us . . . just put one foot in front of the other and then we hit these kinds of landmarks where we’re like Jesus, how did we end up here? Then all of a sudden you can maybe see like another landmark in the distance, and you think, well, if we achieve this, maybe we can get to that next spot. I’ve said to someone in the past in an interview, that I feel like we’re a kind of a lower-league soccer team that has progressed into the advanced stages of the tournament. (laughs)
mxdwn: Okay, Okay. And you’re like, holy shit.
MB: And some much, much bigger, more professional teams and we’re like, well, if we tried really hard, we could win and get to the semifinal. (laughing hard)
mxdwn: And you’re all looking at each other like what the hell?
MB: And we find ourselves in the semifinal and we’re like wow! If things go our way in the semi-final, we’re going to the final. It’s a little bit like that, but yeah, it keeps everything really exciting and almost a bit, kind of hilarious as well. Because honestly, like none of us, we didn’t have any expectations in starting the band. All we wanted to do was probably do a few shows here and there in the UK, maybe go over to mainland Europe and just enjoy it. But things just snowballed and yeah, kind of lifted us off the ground a bit. So yeah, I feel really, really fortunate. I mean, it’s not to say that we don’t put in loads of time and energy to get where we are. There is a lot of work that we all do, yeah.
mxdwn: I always thought it was funny. People say, you know, oh you’re such an overnight success. Like bullshit man, have you seen the last 20 years?
MB: This I think, is a bit of something that a lot of listeners don’t really appreciate, where there’s from the outside looking in, like the band could just suddenly explode out of nowhere. It’s like whoa, where did this band come from? All of those people in that band, there’s probably about 10 years worth of music they’ve been making. Playing with other bands, you know, touring with other bands that nobody really knows about, that is part of it. I’ve worked with people in the past where they can get so bitter and resentful of what to them is the overnight success of other people. More often than not, that’s not the full picture. Yeah. I mean, personally, I’m just like anyone. No matter what music they’re making at the moment, go off and do what you love. And you know, work for that place in it, I think.
mxdwn: It’s something in my life that I’ve experienced. I mean, I’m sitting here talking to you and I talk to a lot of different creative souls. And I never thought I’d be writing for mxdwn.com. And I call it tumble up a little bit. You know, it’s like suddenly, like, holy shit, they think I can do this, man. So do you ever get intimidated by that, kind of like that bigness? Like you walk in and you are you, are you ready for the stage? Do you ever have that moment? I mean, my daughter played college softball and she still at the end would say, Dad, I puked before a game. And, you know, she kind of called it her good nerves.
MB: Yeah, yeah, good nerves, is a really nice way to think of it. Early on, and this is the first time I’ve ever done vocals. Back at the stage and certainly our earlier shows, I would like to keep my back to the audience for a lot of the performance and slowly came around and realized when I turned around I’d look at people and I’d see these, like, these expressions on people’s faces and see — like he would look delighted and I was like, that’s amazing how our music is doing that, you know, influencing that. That’s really, you know positive, it has positive energy to it. I started to think, look no one is here watching our band because they want us to fuck up. Nobody goes to a show wanting that, right? Yeah. So I realized that everyone’s with us. Everyone’s with us. We’re all here for the same reason. Whether you’re a musician or in the audience, we are all here for the same reason. And just like that. Then with the nerves and things, they just started getting better. I just kind of realized that feeling nervous and feeling excited, physiologically, there’s no difference really in the feeling. There’s no difference. So I just started substituting the word nervous for excited. Then the shows or whatever the occasion was just got bigger, I felt that before I would tell myself I feel more nervous. Now I feel more excited. You know it’s just a change of words, but the context completely changes, you’re more in control of it.
mxdwn: You know, I find that fascinating, that you say that and I’m taking some notes because I want to highlight that because in my personal life and professional life, I’ve taken the word try out of my vocabulary. You don’t try something, you do it or you don’t do it. And if you don’t do it, it helps you figure out what went wrong. So that power of words, you talked about it earlier with your lyrics, you understand the powers of words and how they can come across to someone. That’s a very intellectually deep point and very profound. How do you express that in your music? Do you select and search for these words?
MB: I don’t necessarily search for it like I said at the start of the interview, it tends to kind of form very much over time. It’s very rare that I like something on paper and finished. I’ll just build things around some of the words that kind of fall out initially, and usually, these words are very much like ad-libs in the rehearsal rooms because the guys are like playing the songs. I’m just kind of almost like chanting along to them, you know, utterances and syllables and making the sound. Every so often a word will spill out, and I’ll just kind of make a mental note. Then I’ll take things home and just kind of go through this process where I listen to things over and over again. Slowly but surely, things, other things just start to fall out around these words. But I have always, like from the very start of things been kind of. . . I am more so now, aware that in the early days I was vaguely aware of the importance of some of the messaging that I wanted to put into the music because and again, I can’t remember what I was referencing earlier. Well, just when I’m addressing people on stage and not wanting to, kind of, fall into the very usual or expected rock or metal trope. That’s much the same as the lyrics as well, you know?
mxdwn: That’s great.
MB: Just like I found so much joy through listening to heavy music, I kind of wanted to verbalize that in the music as well. And you know, in there for people when they’re listening to it, to take away from the music as well.
mxdwn: The way you’re describing that sounds like you kind of chew on the words and the way they sound because as a listener, when you’re singing the words, it’s an important part of the process too, like as a chef, you call it mouth feel. How the alliteration works and how it comes out, I think that’s . . .
MB: …Yeah, that’s exactly it. Yeah. Yeah. What do you say the term is?
mxdwn: The term is “mouth feel.” Mouth feel. Yeah, like when you take a bite and you know there’s a texture to the food. I think some of your songs, when you’re singing the lyrics you take a bite of that lyric, you feel that word. It’s not just in your head.
MB: Yeah, yeah.
mxdwn: I asked a lot of my interviews that, you know you mentioned you want your band to be “sustainable” is one of your words. How are you fitting into the streaming services? Where do you fall on that? I mean, some bands love it. Some bands hate it. It’s kind of, I’ve heard 3 million views is like $3,000 bucks and you’re like, well, what the hell is that?
MB: It’s a very strange thing. For me, it feels like it’s part of the landscape now, but it’s not part of the landscape in how I would describe a mountain – like I would say, “that’s a beautiful mountain.” I would look at it like there’s a not-very-nice block of flats that house people in the kind of bare minimum wage. It’s a bit like that I suppose. It’s, it exists, and we exist. Basically, streaming services saw a huge problem, as in piracy by downloading audio files became a big problem. They saw the problem and they modified the problems exposed for their own gain. There are very, very easy ways to fix the revenue streams. Like Spotify or Apple or anywhere else. Very, very simple fixes. They’re not going to engage until it’s a problem for major labels because they’re stuck on vast catalogs of music, you know? They’re the people. They’re the only organizations that this business services. Everyone else is just not their problem.
mxdwn: Do you find that that landscape just makes bands tour more, sell more merch and be more direct to the public?
MB: I don’t know if it makes anyone tour anymore or less than or if there’s been any real change. I certainly know the value of merch now that it shows. It feels a lot more valuable because they’re being, you know, the resources being put into this. So yeah, the value of the merch.
mxdwn: We’re almost at the end of our time. I wanted to just kind of follow up and see if you wanted to add anything? I really enjoyed this conversation.
MB: Thank you very much for that. We’ll touring, to the US. We will go back to the states later this year.
mxdwn: I saw those dates.
MB: Probably early next year as well, we’ve got a live album, and thank you for helping promote that album, which was a recording of the last show of our tour, quite long (didn’t feel like it though). It was a really special show, so I’m glad you were.
mxdwn: That’s cool. You got that. You captured that energy in that show. I really appreciate your time.
MB: Thanks. See you later.
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