Raymond Watts (also known by his former stage names Nainz, Nainz Watts and Ray Scaballero) is an English musician, the founding and sole member of the industrial music project PIG, sometimes written as <PIG>.

PIG
Born (1961-09-01) September 1, 1961 (age 62)
OriginLondon, England
GenresIndustrial rock
Occupation(s)Musician
Years active
  • Artist: 1980–present
  • Band: 1987–2003, 2005–2010, 2013–present
Labels
Websitepigindustries.com

Watts was an early member and periodic collaborator of KMFDM, and has been a visible part of the industrial music scene since the early 1980s. He has toured with KMFDM, Nine Inch Nails, Schaft, Schwein, and Einstürzende Neubauten.

History edit

Recent activity (2010–present) edit

Watts, Dr. Shinto and John Gosling released a four-song EP titled Mellan Rummen on 15 November 2010 on Amazon.com.

On 8 June 2012, Marc Heal revealed a demo version of "the first new PIG track in eight years" titled "Drugzilla (Rough As A Hog's Arse Mix)" via Cubanate's Official Facebook page and providing their followers a link to his personal SoundCloud page. The link was reposted by Watts a few hours later.[1][2][3][4][5][6] A second demo titled "Shake" was released on 15 July 2012; again via Heal's Soundcloud page, this time also noting Dan Abela as engineer.[7] In November 2014, Watts approved mixes for an upcoming joint-release EP.[8]

In March 2015, another collaborative EP was announced with Primitive Race titled Long in the Tooth with a worldwide release date of 5 June 2015 through Metropolis Records.[9] Later that month in an interview, Watts revealed a new PIG album has been written and recorded. Former KMFDM bandmate En Esch will be providing final touches to the album.[10]

On 15 June 2016, the official PIG Facebook page announced that the new PIG album titled The Gospel would be released on 9 September 2016 on Metropolis. Soon after. tour dates were announced The American Excess tour with opening bands En Esch & Peter Turns Pirate. The North American tour takes place in September and October 2016. A remix album, Swine & Punishment, was released in 2017.

In 2018, PIG released the album Risen, supported by another North American tour. 2019 saw the release of a collection of cover songs on an LP titled Candy. The release of Candy was followed in the fall of the same year by the Divine Descent North American Tour, supported by Cyanotic and A Primitive Evolution. The Divine Descent Tour concluded on 6 October 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A brief tour of the United Kingdom followed.

In 2020, PIG released a compilation album, Pain Is God, which featured some new tracks and included songs from prior tour EPs dating back to the previous year. The album was released digitally, and on CD and vinyl, including special edition packages with unique 3D features in the digipack or record sleeve.

Musical style edit

PIG tends to sound more orchestral than KMFDM, with darker, more complex, more ambient beats. His album and song titles tend to be witty, rife with alliteration ("Prayer Praise & Profit") or are plays on the titles of popular works or phrases (The Swining / "Symphony for the Devil"). He also manages to work food, heroin or pork related terms into his albums. Like KMFDM, humor features prominently in PIG's lyrics, although they tend towards a darker/grittier tone than KMFDM's.

Collaboration with KMFDM edit

Because Raymond Watts is a central figure in both PIG and KMFDM, the two projects have seen much crossover. Watts has contributed his skills as a songwriter and vocalist to several KMFDM albums, including their first album Opium in 1984, and has a heavy presence on their 1995 album Nihil, which spawned the hit "Juke Joint Jezebel". A collaborative EP titled Sin Sex & Salvation was released in 1994 under the moniker "PIG vs. KMFDM". KMFDM has in turn assisted Watts with his PIG projects in production and personnel. Current KMFDM guitarists Steve White and Jules Hodgson (as well as former KMFDM guitarist Günter Schulz) and drummer Andy Selway have been involved with PIG. Watts has performed with KMFDM as part of the touring lineup, with the concerts billed as "KMFDM featuring PIG". The setlists for those shows feature KMFDM songs alongside Pig songs. A live CD from the 2002 "Sturm & Drang" tour was released on Metropolis Records that same year.

Watts was given a tongue-in-cheek description in the lyrics to the KMFDM song "Intro" from the 2003 album WWIII:

The Lord of Lard, the Mighty Swine
He loves Manchego and a bottle of wine
Also known as Raymond Watts,
He screams out his lungs while his brain slowly rots!

Other collaborations edit

Watts has worked with several industrial and avant-garde artists, receiving credits as PIG and Raymond Watts interchangeably. He has also been credited as "Nainz Watts" or "Nains Watts" on several early releases.

Solo band members edit

Discography (partial) edit

Several of his albums were originally released in Japan, where he enjoyed considerably more success than in the United States and United Kingdom, but some of those albums were eventually released in the US.

In 2004 he signed to Grand Recordings for distribution in the UK, under the name "Watts". The All Hamerican Pig Show was released in 2011 as a DVD via the Pig website, featuring performances from Pig's 2006 U.S. tour and a complete live performance from Osaka, Japan, 1999. The DVD also included the music videos for Painiac and Everything.

Studio albums edit

  • A Poke in the Eye... with a Sharp Stick (1988)
  • Praise the Lard (1991)
  • The Swining (1993) – Japan only release; reissued in 1999 in the US as The Swining/Red Raw & Sore
  • Sinsation (1995) – US release in 1996
  • Wrecked (1996) – Japanese release; US release in 1997 has somewhat different track listing
  • Genuine American Monster (1999) – US release in 2002
  • Pigmartyr (2004) – UK only release, using the "Watts" name, although it was re-released in 2005 as Pigmata under the "PIG" moniker
  • The Gospel (2016) – co-written and co-produced by Z. Marr[14]
  • Risen (2018)
  • Candy (2019) – album of covers
  • Pain Is God (2020)
  • The Merciless Light (2022)

Remix albums edit

  • Swine & Punishment (2017) – remixes of songs from The Gospel
  • Stripped & Whipped (2019) – remixes of songs from Risen

EPs edit

Singles edit

  • "Never For Fun" (1988)
  • "Sick City" / "Shit for Brains" (1989)
  • "Shit for Brains" – Germany-only release
  • "The Fountain of Miracles" (1993)
  • "Black Mass" (2018)- (Free Digital only album of Christmas Covers)
  • "Seed of Evil" (2019) – with Black Needle Noise

Video releases edit

  • The All Hamerican Pig Show (2011)

Book releases edit

  • PIG - The Word of the Lard: The Scripture of Raymond Watts (2017) – book compiling all of Raymond Watts' lyrics to date

Music videos edit

Several music videos have been filmed, but most remain unreleased outside Japan. Most videos have surfaced online on YouTube in questionable quality. The video for Arbor Vitate is actually a re-cut version of the Schaft video of the same song.

  • "Shit for Brains" (1988)
  • "The Fountain of Miracles" (1993)
  • "The Seven Veils" (1993)
  • "Painiac" (1995)
  • "Everything" (1996)
  • "Arbor Vitate" (2004)
  • "Long in the Tooth" (2015)
  • "The Diamond Sinners" (2016)
  • "Found in Filth" (2016)
  • "Prey & Obey" (2017)
  • "The Chosen Few" (2018)
  • "The Revelation" (2018)
  • "That's The Way (I Like It)" (2018)
  • "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" (2018)
  • "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" (2019)
  • "Mobocracy" (2019)
  • "Sex & Death" (2020)
  • "Rock 'n' Roll Refugee" (2020)

References edit

  1. ^ NiNa (8 June 2012). "06/08/2012 Pig - "Drugzilla" unofficial mix available online". Fabryka Industrial Rock Magazine. Retrieved 8 June 2012.
  2. ^ Yücel, Ilker (Ilker81x) (8 June 2012). "PIG unveils a rough mix of first new track in eight years". ReGen Magazine. Retrieved 8 June 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ COMA Music Magazine (8 June 2012). ":Music News: New rough mix of a new PIG track.". COMA Music Magazine. Retrieved 8 June 2012.
  4. ^ Heal, Marc (8 June 2012). "And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present you…". Official Cubanate on Facebook. Retrieved 8 June 2012.
  5. ^ Watts, Raymond (8 June 2012). "Rough mix of new PIG track "Drugzilla".". Official PIG on Facebook. Archived from the original on 29 November 2012. Retrieved 8 June 2012.
  6. ^ Heal, Marc (8 June 2012). "Pig - Drugzilla (Rough As A Hog's Arse Mix)". Official Marc Heal on SoundCloud. Retrieved 8 June 2012.
  7. ^ Heal, Marc (15 June 2012). "Pig - Shake (Rough Mix)". Official Marc Heal on SoundCloud. Retrieved 17 June 2012.
  8. ^ "Cubanate (Facebook) - Spoke to Watts on the phone..." Facebook.com. 4 November 2014. Archived from the original on 26 February 2022. Retrieved 18 November 2014.
  9. ^ "Long in the Tooth". Metropolis-mailorder.com. 9 March 2015. Retrieved 11 March 2015.
  10. ^ "Eye to Eye with the Compound Eye - Marc Heal and Raymond Watts Interview". 23 March 2015. Archived from the original on 30 March 2015. Retrieved 24 March 2015.
  11. ^ Daviet, Brandon (29 June 2006). "The All Hamerican Pig Show". Westword.com. Retrieved 5 January 2019.
  12. ^ "Raymond Watts Forums - MDK2 Track 2". Archived from the original on 6 January 2008. Retrieved 17 May 2007.
  13. ^ "Team Cybergeist - How to Destroy Something Beautiful (CD, Album) at Discogs". Discogs. Archived from the original on 7 July 2017. Retrieved 1 March 2015.
  14. ^ "Official Album Credits for The Gospel". Discogs.com. Metropolis. Retrieved 9 September 2017.
  15. ^ Ilker Yücel (30 August 2018). "Music video for PIG and Sasha Grey cover track premieres on Pornhub". REGEN Magazine. Retrieved 8 September 2018.

External links edit