REVIEW: Pig Pen - Mental Madness
Hardcore punk from the minds of Chef Matty Matheson and Wade MacNeil (of Alexisonfire).
When a renowned chef and award-winning television producer decides to grill up a hardcore band with the guitar player and backing vocalist of St. Catherine's biggest musical export since the birth of Neil Peart, it begs the question: do they have riffs or nah?
Pig Pen's reputation may precede them, but their debut record, Mental Madness, is not about egos; it's about hardcore—and paying homage to their collective roots in the southern Ontario music scene as authentically as they can. Matty Matheson and Wade MacNeil (of Alexisonfire), along with the Romano brothers and Tommy Major, aren't trying to rock the boat or even create something that might appeal to a broad cultural audience here. This is hardcore for hardcore, and will live or die by its merits as such. For that reason alone, any notion of corporatism from the usual pundits can get tossed out of the window, because the truth is, Mental Madness is a perfectly competent hardcore record, and little else.
Stylistically, the group draws heavy influence from the seminal Boston and New York punk scenes—the violent grooves of SSD, the rhythmic thrash of Cro-Mags, the Youth Crew movement's devotion to breakdowns and positivity (in case the song title "Power Love Train" didn't give it away)—and, due to modern production tools, they end up slotting into the zeitgeist somewhere between The Rival Mob and Power Trip. The latter of these comparisons is in large part thanks to Arthur Rizk, who handled the mixing on both Mental Madness and 2017's Nightmare Logic and has a certain gift for making bands sound cavernous and intimidating. The drums are boomy, the guitars are thick, and Matheson's gargantuan roar is dabbed with slick reverb. The whole affair sounds fantastic, but the album remains pockmarked by predictability even when the conventions it relies on tend to be executed extremely well (case in point: the breakdown in the song "Pig Pen", which could make even the oldest mosh retiree crack a knowing grin).
Considering that Mental Madness was ostensibly written and recorded in the span of two days, it's hard to fault for not being much of a boundary-pusher, but that doesn't mean the group abandoned all opportunity to throw a thumbprint of personality on the record. The back-to-back duo of "Highway" and "Venom Moon Rising" is a clear highlight for the way the group lets a bit of their AC/DC love slip into the mix, with big monster truck choruses that MacNeil's gravelly backing vocals suit oh so well. It's this brief pocket between hardcore and rock n' roll that Pig Pen sounds perhaps the most at-home in, but Mental Madness leaves its best trick for last.
"XJXIXDX" sends the group headfirst into a psychedelic splash of sludgy riffs that pound unrepentantly as thaumaturgic chimes spin like dizzy stars around Matheson and MacNeil's indecipherable anguish. It’s not only the longest song on the album, sitting at over 6 minutes (about triple the average length), but it’s the group’s most intense and head-spinning song as well, and it's hard not to think of what a Pig Pen sophomore might sound like if they continue to let their hair down and lean further in this direction. In the meantime, Mental Madness fulfills its promise of hardcore for hardcore, for all its pros and cons. The most important question (other than "does it riff?" of course) is "would it be fun to see live?" The answer to that is a resounding yes—so long as you can see through the wall of photographers.
6.5/10
this passes the fire suppression test
Gonna check