Track Review: PIG — Sex & Suicide

Whether as a founding member of KMFDM or as a crowd-captivator and core collaborator with the Japanese group Schaft, Raymond Watts has mastered his own ways of staying in the spotlight over the past decades. “Sex & Suicide,” the latest track from Hurt People Hurt, only further solidifies that sentiment. The new single, released on April 10th, is fittingly described by Watts as “a walk on the high-wire blade of want for something so bad you beg for release.” 

Hitting the listener immediately with a TB303-esque acid bass, combined with hard-hitting drums, distorted guitars, and industrial textures, Watts makes it clear from the start that “Sex & Suicide” is a heavy journey to desire and back. The track lyrically navigates a familiar PIG terrain — the desperate search for something to fill an unnamed void, oscillating between hunger and self-destruction. Lines like "something to hide the tears that died / something I can never hold" are immediately contrasted by the contrasting, blunt aggression of "fight dirty, fight back / the best defence is to attack," and capture the push-pull between vulnerability and survival that has defined Watts' songwriting throughout his career. The track closes on an almost spectral note: "I got a message from nowhere / like a ghost from my winter's past,” and pulls the listener back into ambiguity just as the momentum peaks.

“Sex & Suicide” is the third track on PIG’s upcoming album Hurt People Hurt, due for release on May 22nd through Metropolis Records. The album follows the dirt directly to the dustcart where misfits and reprobates can both lose and find themselves in a full-fat emporium of ecstasy, naked words and momentous music. Plucked and sucked on the fruits of pain and bliss, this prime slice of PIG provides a light space for dark spirits. Enter bruised, leave changed.

PIG will be performing in the US on the opening day of the Dark Force Fest in Parsippany, New Jersey, on May 1st, followed by a string of September shows in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Austin as part of the Cold Waves XIV festival. In Japan, a date in Tokyo on June 26th sold out immediately, with another to be added soon.

7.5/10

PIG continues to pique the interest of industrial rock devotees with the new single “Sex & Suicide.”