Pigs of the Roman Empire

[spread regal beagle]

I'm telling y'all, Pigs Of The Roman Empire is rapidly climbing up my ladder of favourite Melvins songs. It's soo damn good. Keep listenin to it.

[cellphone]

COD is awesome.

[GrimReaper]

The more I listen to this the more I like it.

[razorblader]

Last night, my band played a show at the Double Door in CHicago.  On my way home, I listened to PIGS, which was perfect, as it allowed me to follow my thoughts during the spooky ambient parts, and rock out every once in a while.  I love this record.

[steve]

After many months I can finally say the album has grown on me (if you care)....

[Joe Deutrom]

I gave Pigs of the Roman Empire a couple of spins today at work and decided to resurrect this dusty topic to post my most recent thoughts about it.

It's been well over a year since this album has been released. I remember the excitement that a new Melvins release was generating here from a lot of us regulars. When it finally came out and we were eagerly listening to it, the initial responses were mixed, you had people who liked it, people who did not like it and blamed Lustmord, and people who were "meh" about it. Today while listening to it in headphones, I found myself coming to the realization that Pigs of the Roman Empire is arguably the Melvins most daring and cohesive release to date. It's an album that forges all of the elements that made the Melvins our favorite group with all of the experimental excursions they have been flirting with recently, that you find on albums like Prick, COD, Electroretard and Honky. The album flows brilliantly and each song belongs in such a way that you have to hear it in its entirety to fully appreciate this. I think this album is fantastic.

Pink Bat/ZZZZ Best is the Melvins' most furious track since The Maggot was newly released. Safety Third is a headtrip.
Toadi Acceleratio is unlike anything the Melvins ever attempted and the result is a success. The song Pigs of the Roman Empire, is a plain epic right up there with their other long and crawling masterpieces from their other albums. Bloated Pope rocks and it translates well live. III is an appropriate intro to this monumental release and Idolatrous Apostate is a weird and slow rumble in a subterranean environment. If you haven't listen to this album in a while, you ought to. Maybe those here who wasn't all that impressed with it should give it a second chance. I think this album can and will grow on you.

[Uncle Fester]

i just finished my first listen.

right now, i feel quite disappointed, i'm sorry to say. it's kinda the album that i feared it would be -- full of seemingly random bumps, bangs, and clanks, with lots of whooshing sounds. and lots of reverb. the songs are extremely fucked-up, as if they were recorded normally and then chopped up and remixed. there's definitely good bits, but there's not any song, save for "the bloated pope," that feels like something resembling "classic" melvins. it just feels sloppy and unfocused, like they just took a bunch of riffs and noises and threw them in a blender.

track by track:

1)III -- just an intro, essentially. reverby banging sounds, with whooshing, eerie high-pitched violinesque sounds, and chime clanks. it leads directly into...

2)the bloated pope -- the best song on the album, and the most "traditional" melvins song. unfortunately, it's all downhill from here.

3)toadi acceleratio -- a vaguely east indian-sounding rhythmic instrumental with a repeating guitar line in the background. very static, essentially goes nowhere.

4)pigs of the roman empire -- more clanking, whooshing, and banging noises. around the 6 minute mark, a cool riff begins surfacing and receding a few times. dale's drums fade in and play along for a while, and then the riff fades back into more fucking whooshing sounds. i'm beginning to dislike lustmord at this point. around 11:00, a funky drumbeat emerges and kevin plays some evil bass notes. then, it's some distorted drum/bass thing. around 14:00, an AWESOME riff comes around, and the whole band rocks for a while, until it ends at 18:30. then, guess what? more lustmord clicks and whirrs and gothic keyboardy pad sounds. the end. shit.

5)pink bat -- noise blasts that sound like a cat walking across a distorted casio keyboard for the first minute, and then...an actual song. only thing is, it's produced/mixed really weird, so it's a bit underwhelming. there's some bee-in-your-bonnet lead guitar, and buzz begins singing around 2:30. more noisy leads follow after that, and the track ends without anything very interesting happening. the mixing is really fucked up, and kinda gets in the way of what could've been a strong track.

6)zzzz best -- more reverby thumps, only from dale's drums. kevin noodles on the bass. leads into...

7)safety third -- could've been the best track on the album, but the band's completely overwhelmed by lustmord's sound effects. it's like the musical track is turned down farther than it should be to make room for the squeaks and gurgling monk chant sounds. dale's drums sound like he's playing buckets. buzz's vocals are pretty cool, but they're totally obscured. it sounds like there's a whammy pedal on the drums or something. some nice riffs and drumming bust through at 3:00. the whole last two minutes of the track feel like a remixed ministry song, all cut-and-paste riffs and beats dropping in and out of the mix. it doesn't feel like a band playing. it feels like a computer spitting out random bits of melvins. and then, really annoying high-pitched bleeps take over your ears for the last minute, ruining the good groove the band is playing under all the sonic window dressing.

8)idolatrous apostate -- guess what, kids? more whooshing sounds. at this point, i want to deport lustmord to get him away from my favorite band. sound effects bullshit until about 3:00, then some bass notes, hi hat hits, and buzz's vocals pitched way down come in for some random bullshit along with some lustmord crap that sounds like tubas and distant out-of-tune violins.

9)untitled + hidden track -- more. fucking. reverby. thumps. wow. if this is ambient, you should give every construction worker a recording contract. i don't see anything interesting about this kind of shit. it just sounds like the sound effects from a godzilla movie or something. 2:30 to 4:30 is silence, and then there's this sampled orchestral bit that i know from SOMEWHERE, and i can't place it, but i was humming the melody right along with it. someone will figure this one out.

and that's it. the album ends. i would say there's only three real songs, but "pink bat" and "safety third" are ruined by bad production/mixing and the constant intrusion of lustmord, throwing his pointless noises over potentially great songs.

i don't know what to say -- real sorry to be so negative, but i'm not impressed, and i was really, really looking forward to this, too. "hostile ambient takeover" was so fucking awesome, i had hoped that they would follow it up with an equally great album, but this is like a cross between "honky" and the noise stuff from the amrep singles series.

not a good album. i get the feeling they blew their "rock" wad on the upcoming jello biafra collaboration, which would bum me out, because i'd rather hear buzz's voice any day. oh, well. i gotta respect the fact that they're taking chances and keeping things interesting. it's just too bad that it's not more enjoyable to listen to.

maybe you folks will see it differently. i'll be interesting to see your opinions.

Im sorry, and excuse me for this but, your a fucking moron.

[Uncle Fester]

one of the best melvins albums.IMO. its up there with HAT.

[Green Honey]

you know, you really don't know who's doing what on this album...

[Vcavallo]

buzz says alot of the stuff that you think is melvins is actually lustmord and vice versa. 
unless he just said that so fans might give it a chance, but i doubt that.

[Andy]

The more I listen to this the more I like it.

It gets better and better fo sho. The first half of it kicks the arse of the second half though. And Toadi Acceleratio is still average. I'm going to put it on now while I make me tea.

[rhett E rock]

this whole album kicks ass.  definitelty the prime expample of subtle melodies in an album.  i think it takes a trained ear for this one.  pigs of the roman empire is pure brilliance.  definitely one of my favorite Melvins releases.

[rhett E rock]

Pink Bat.  i don't think this song gets enough credit.  for some reason it reminds me if the Melvins and Motorhead wrote a song together.

[anaconda]

totally, i've said that to myself as well.

[Uncle Fester]

I got it on vinyl... I got it a while ago when they toured with jello, i had the chance to get buzz to sign it but i didnt have the balls to go up and talk to him. Hes quite intimidating.