PIG

PIG is Raymond Watts, former screamer of KMFDM. PIG has been an entity for over two decades, kicking up dust at the whim of his whisky voiced alter ego Raymond Watts. Huge in Japan, cited as an influence by a veritable who's who of industrial rock - including Trent who signed him the right after he did Marilyn Manson. PIG is currently working on a new album to follow up 2005's stomper PIGMATA, on Metropolis Records.


Watts began his arrest record in London where he was most likely pissed off about something and doing sound manipulations, loops and live sound for Psychic TV. He soon crashed into Einstuerzende Neubauten (probably in a strip bar) and escaped the smug complacency of the English music scene by moving to Hamburg, Germany and setting up his Building Site studio in a bunker of munitions factory, where he invited in artists including Sprung Aus Den Wolken, Die Haut, and Christiane F. In his pursuit of a cutting edge music scene he sought out like-minded souls to create terrorism instead of tonality. Playing on European/American Neubauten tours, he quickly earned a reputation for destroying PA systems -- the security guards sent by the PA companies to protect the gear were not amused. Between their security thugs and ones hired by Watts to protect him from them, most nights ended up bloody, tense and occasionally on fire. Burning the stage and blowing up the PAs...you should have been there.

While collaborating with Neubauten's "gritter" twins: Blixa Bargeld and FM Einheit, Watts lived in the red light district next to a brothel, in amongst the sleaze of the Hamburg docks. Watts heard about Sascha Konietzko who was doing bizarre work with vacuum cleaners, and after drinking him into submission, dragged him and his tall, pale cohort En Esch down the stairs into the freezing Building Site studio, where they locked themselves into Watts' "frozen cesspit" with 20' steel sheets and other garbage, emerging with the KMFDM debut What Do You Know Deutschland?

When the wall came down, Watts split his time between London and Tokyo, looking for a new alien habitat after Berlin's pleasure dome exploded. PIG is big in Japan. Well of course he is. He's 6'3". PIG morphed with various collaborators and Watts started working with Japanese musicians, turning his attention to Schaft, which became a huge hit there. The Watts system emerged as an elastic style of working with refuse and collaborating with pariahs: one man's trash is another man's treasure, darling.

Long-time PIG fan Trent Reznor came to see him around '91/'92 at a tiny club in Camden, London, England and introduced himself to the unimpressed Watts who was surprised that this fellow knew most of PIG's scattered discography. PIG was invited to open Nine Inch Nails' European tour in '94 -- complete with real pig heads on stage that were a load of fun after a few days' decomposition. Later, in 1995, Reznor's Nothing label released PIG's fourth album, Sinsation.

In the mid 1990's, Konietzko ran into Watts again and they worked on the KMFDM vs. PIG EP, which led to Watts returning to the fold for Nihil, the most successful KMFDM album to date, which included the massive Watts-penned hit "Juke Joint Jezebel."

For 2005, Pigmartyr was re-mastered by Isaac Glendening of Cesium _137 and three bonus tracks were added along with new artwork to create Pigmata. Slick cynical lyrics delivered with growling vocals on top of a razor and nail mattress of driving guitars, heavy synths, and aggressive beats to create this industrial-rock accomplishment.