I've been putting off this review for some time for a couple of reasons: firstly, I didn't think I could describe the band any better than they do it themselves  - "Pigs sound like a petty, early-morning drunken argument in a gravel parking lot about the stupid, impossible math of how to divide forty-one dollars three ways." Secondly, the feeling that the low-end rumble of this record left in the pit of my stomach felt like my secret life was just about to be found out and I was minutes away from a life-changing confrontation.....I guess.

Also, I wanted to keep 'You Ruin Everything' to myself a little longer because, as records from previously unknown bands go, this is pretty special. Actually, pretty is a word that shouldn't come within a mile of this album.

Pigs were formed when Dave Curran, bassist with NYC noisemongers Unsane, picked up a guitar and started writing songs with drummer Jim Paradise (Player's Club, Hellno, Freshkills). Andrew Schneider, producer of the likes of Cave In and Converge, was asked to fill in on bass for a couple of shows...and never left.

The cover art of 'You Ruin Everything' is, quite possibly, my favourite of the year so far. The photograph of the beach-souring clowns, somehow, fits the album perfectly, its dark humour and stunted bleakness a tight fit.

The ten songs that make up the album offer up a grotesquery of sound, tightly wound balls of tension and anxiety spoiling for a fight with your speakers. There are times, rare moments really, the opening of 'Give It' for example, 'Massive Operator Error' (featuring a dirty, grunge-tinged hook) also, when you think that a hint of melody is gonna burst through like a ray of light....until a hefty riff creeps up on it and slams it into the nearest wall.

'Drained', possibly the album's highlight (though I'd be scared to mention it lest the other nine tracks find out where I live and come pay me a visit), features, amazingly amidst its massive, soiled riffage, a drum solo....just because it can. 'Mashantucket' pulls itself out of the sludge for just over three and a half minutes and motors along, but the trips out of the heaving groove are few and far between.

'You Ruin Everything' is an album so heavy, so obese with noise, that I'm guessing they had to take a wall out of the studio just to get the thing released. If, like me, you love the darker, seedier side of life on this rock, and you like to watch the bleak shit happen to a soundtrack of gloriously heavy music, then this album is for you. Recommended.

www.pigsnyc.com