Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Irked – Birmingham – Live Review

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Irked – Castle and Falcon Birmingham – 8th of April 2025

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs are back and, as Matt says, they honestly didn’t know if anyone would give a fuck this time. But with a new album and tour just starting the faithful have come out again, a mixture of pure metalheads, punks and the usual old groovers looking for noise. Fighting Boredom have headed over to Birmingham with a carload of like minded delinquents to check them out.

After roaming around most of Coventry the Photographer finally gets all of us in the car and heads off to the bright lights of Brum. We park near one of its picturesque piles of bin bags but no dog size rats unfortunately. The Castle and Falcon is full, we push our way through the people standing in the entrance and find space at the side. The Photographer moves into the middle and I start to write.

Irked are a punk band. They slide nicely into Garage rock’n’roll and a slice of Oi! On the side but it is most definitely punk and they are great. The singer is brilliant and seems to be screaming abuse at someone over the music as we come in, she looks wild. The guitarist introduces the songs and makes us and the rest of the band laugh. ‘Why’s everybody want a fight with me?’ Her voice is brilliant and she looks genuinely scary when singing this song. The next one may be called ‘Fuck Friday’ it might not be, it’s about going out in the week and they play it laughing, they are all having the best time playing and what they do is punk rock with no frills, just having a blast. They play a faster song and it’s verging on hardcore which is perfect for the vocal and then the singer is the crowd, kids dancing next to her, bringing it all together. She gets back up and the next one may be a ‘Gothic Song’ but I may have misheard that. The drums and bass get harder and the guitar whines over the top as the singer crouches down and sings looking scared. It turns to a hardcore thrash and it’s brilliant. The daft chat continues between the songs.

It gets slower, jerky and sludgy but it’s still ace, then it slams into hard core thrash, shifts back down to an even paced punk sound and even angrier singing. A great band, I bought a single.

The back of the room is jammed. The stage fills with dry ice and the lights roam. The lights go down and AC/DC’s For Those About To Rock plays, fellow Geordie Brian Johnson spitting out the words. For the record, it was the first album I ever bought, a statement of intent from the Pigs. It finishes and they slip onstage in the dark. There’s a whine of feedback and a huge riff, bass, drums and strobes slam in too and they are rising up over and over, one massive groove. Everything all at once, it stops, huge drums sound and Matt is onstage in demon t shirt and thai boxing shorts, he leans in and starts to sing and it’s at that moment that it usually makes perfect sense but it doesn’t. The sound is full of mud, nothing is coming together and all can hear is his vocals and a massive buzz of bass feedback. This is sorted sharpish however and they start to shine through.

They start off a groove, a massive riff based groove and just carry it on, the one guitarist holding his guitar by his head and moving around, the other, looking like a true Metal God stands stock still. Cool as. The bassist and drummer keep it loose and swinging, it’s a very metal boogie and people are moving to it across the room. The vocals now sound ace as he holds the mic out like a sacrifice and moves like a man possessed.

The chat between the songs is as irreverent and daft as ever. Showing immense pride in having achieved five albums and seeing that people also still give a fuck about them. He’s researched bands that only had four albums and realised that the Vengaboys only had four? I told you it was daft. This carries on as he announces that the Vengaboys are playing Download festival while they still haven’t played there. A travesty in anyone’s eyes surely.

The riffs come in again, everything slams down and it’s mayhem, they really are good. It’s all gelled together and the sound has been sorted out to ‘bloody loud’.

They slow down to glorious doom with a tip of the hat to the might of Iommi and Butler and a sly wink to Mr Rollins. They speed up and the singer is now shadow boxing as the music blasts around him. You can’t hear why but there’s a roadie on stage trying to swap out the mic, eventually it’s done and although there’s been no break in the groove it frees up Matt to move again. It all pauses and then there’s a massive loose bass line, fuzzed out to hell and nasty, the guitar joins in, the drums crash together and it builds up to more rock, more roll and more noise, this is very heavy metal dude.The bass hums again and as he sings he reaches out into the audience as the music falls down the stairs into the floor. They go into a massive metal boogie. It’s big, nasty and fabulous. The sound is old school, it’s classic hard rock with a unique Pigs sound but it’s keeping the sound and fire of Hard Rock going, someone has to do it and Pigs have picked up the mantle.

He says that someone told him that the band were brilliant, only the band, not him so he has taken it on himself to introduce the band, it sounds like wrestling introductions shouted with huge dramatic effect.

They play on, the strobes flicker as the smoke pours out behind them, the music crashes, grinds and, above all else, rocks harder than concrete. The band love it, you can tell by watching them that this is where they belong and for all the talk of not knowing if people still give a fuck about them you know that if they play people will come and see. Sometimes you just need Rock and Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs will give it to you.

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