PIG

British musician Raymond Watts anchors his main endeavor in the project Pig, having helped establish the German industrial outfit KMFDM. Early Pig releases stood apart from many better-known industrial bands through a grittier, more experimental stance; the 1988 album A Poke in the Eye... with a Sharp Stick, for example, wove jazz and orchestral colors akin to occasional associate Foetus together with metal guitars and layered dance rhythms. Later records grew tougher and more guitar-oriented while still inserting unexpected ingredients, among them the Latin rhythms of 1999's Genuine American Monster. After Pigmata in 2005 the project fell silent for ten years, only to resume in 2016 with The Gospel, which brought fellow KMFDM founder En Esch into the lineup. That return inaugurated a steady stream of albums that encompassed the wide-ranging covers collection Candy in 2019 and the stripped-down industrial rock of Pain Is God in 2020 and Red Room in 2024.

Raymond Watts entered the world in London in 1961. Since the early 1980s he has functioned as engineer, producer, and musician, collaborating with industrial entities including Psychic TV, the Coil-related Zos Kia, Foetus, and Einstürzende Neubauten, as well as the indie pop outfit the Hit Parade. He also numbered among the originators of the performance-art collective first called Kein Mehrheit für die Mitleid, which later turned more musical and took the name KMFDM. Departing that group in its formative phase, Watts issued multiple albums as Pig. Wax Trax! put out his debut LP, 1988's A Poke in the Eye... with a Sharp Stick, along with his first two singles. He next delivered Praise the Lard on Concrete Productions in 1991.

Watts soon established ties with an A&R executive at Alfa Entertainment, the label that issued The Swining and Red Raw & Sore, initially available only in Japan. He also produced Sow's 1994 debut Je M'Aime (credited to Anna Wildsmith), later reissued as a Pig & Sow joint release. When his A&R contact relocated to Victor, Watts followed and placed several albums with the company, among them the 1995 full-length Sinsation, which reached the United States the next year via Trent Reznor's Nothing Records. That same year he rejoined KMFDM to help record their seventh album, Nihil. Wrecked appeared in 1996, with its American edition arriving in 1997 on Wax Trax!/TVT.

Over time the music on Watts' albums grew more intricate, absorbing German, British, and Japanese pop elements alongside assorted electronic styles. The No One Gets Out of Her Alive EP surfaced in 1998. Cleopatra Records combined the two Alfa albums into one volume in 1999, reviving one of his strongest creative stretches. Genuine American Monster came out in Japan that year, receiving a Metropolis reissue three years afterward. Watts continued performing with KMFDM for several additional years and shared credit on their live document Sturm & Drang Tour 2002.

Two years later he released the hard-rocking Pigmartyr under his own name; a remastered edition retitled Pigmata followed in 2005 as Pig's seventh studio album. Watts then set Pig aside for a decade, though he issued a handful of projects under his own name, including the 2010 EP Mellan Rummen (with Dr. Shinto), written as the soundtrack to a book by Daniel Watson. As Pig he appeared on Mekon's 2013 single "Bin Therre," a track by frequent collaborator John Gosling. Pig resurfaced in 2015 with two joint EPs: Compound Eye Sessions alongside Cubanate's Marc Heal (aka MC Lord of the Flies) and Long in the Tooth with industrial rock supergroup Primitive Race.

En Esch, another KMFDM co-founder, formally joined Pig in 2016, and the project's eighth LP, The Gospel, emerged that year; a remix album, Swine & Punishment, followed in 2017. The studio album Risen arrived in June 2018, and several months afterward the group issued a cover of KC & the Sunshine Band's "That's the Way (I Like It)" featuring musician and adult film star Sasha Grey. After the 2019 remix set Stripped & Whipped, the Grey collaboration was included on Candy, an entire covers album released by U.K. label Armalyte Industries. Following another remix album for the label, 2020's Stripped & Ripped, plus three independently released EPs, Pig returned to Metropolis with Pain Is God, which incorporated reworked material from the EPs together with the KMFDM song "Kickin Ass."

Pig issued two remix projects in 2021: the full-length Pain Killer and the EP Drugged Dangerous & Damned. After the 2022 EP Baptise Bless & Bleed, the band delivered The Merciless Light, which featured former Pitchshifter member Jim Davies. Candy (Rewrapped), a reworking of the group's earlier covers album by longtime associate Martin Eden, appeared in 2023. In 2024 Pig released a deluxe edition of the 1994 EP Sin Sex & Salvation, recorded with KMFDM, along with a remastered reissue of Sinsation. The band also put out Red Room, a full-length that includes contributions from Chris Connelly (Revolting Cocks, Ministry), Alexis Mincolla (3Teeth), Christopher Hall (Stabbing Westward), and others.