Pigface

While on tour as part of the 1989 line-up of electronic-rock avatars Ministry, drummers Martin Atkins and Bill Rieflin felt that the pool of collaborators had more to offer than just a couple of weeks of blistering live shows, exploded speaker enclosures and trashed dressing rooms. So, like any good notion fueled by possibility, artistry and Newcastle Brown Ale, Pigface came into fruition.

Hailed by some as "an aggressive new alternative-rock Frankenstein," derided by others as "the smell of a hundred Porta-Johns falling like dominoes," Pigface grew to become a fierce juggernaut with a malleable line-up that could be as limited as the individual members' personal phone books, or as packed with possibilities as the Yellow Pages. Egos where willingly surrendered for the greater good: the onstage fire-eater at a Pittsburgh show was just as important as the participation of then-fledgling Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. Fans going to the shows expecting a rote regurgitation of the stuff found on the debut 1991 Pigface document, Gub, were left screaming and shaking their sweaty bodies in wild abandon, or scratching their heads down to skull-surface trying to make sense of it all.

Now, after four studio releases, three remix collections, four live albums, 10 tours, a broken sink in Kansas City and a decade of neurosis, comes the double-disc collection scintillatingly titled, The Best of Pigface. (released March 6th on Atkins own Invisible label) The first disc sports a bevy of face-offs remastered for your stringent high-fidelity needs, including "Asphole" (starring Skinny Puppy's charismatic frontman Ogre), "Suck" (the taut minimalist groove worked by Trent Reznor), the brooding "Empathy" (intoned by Swans founder Michael Gira) and the Chicago rock summit "Point Blank," featuring electronic-rock icons Chris Connelly and Paul Barker playing alongside Big Black/Shellac founder Steve Albini. The second disc features previously unreleased tracks starring the likes of Pixies founders Frank Black and Joey Santiago ("Dog"), Dean Ween ("Mickey"), and other aural ephemera in the form of interviews, radio station ID's and radically reworked demo ideas.

At close inspection, it's obvious that Pigface has become much more than the convenient, yet dubious tag of "super group." A strategy for the creation of uncompromising music, Pigface has been a farm team (belly dancer Christine Petro added some color to U2's PopMart tour), as well as a launch pad for underground mavens to reinvent themselves. The collective fostered the aesthetic growth of former Silverfish screamer Lesley Rankine (heard here on "Chickasaw", and "Ten Ground and Down") into the sultry grooves of Ruby. Ditto for the career of former Gaye Byker On Acid Mary Hoxley, who later ascendend from "grebo" obscurity to British dance-rock royalty in Apollo 440. Pigface also acted as a rampart where established musicians-such as Tool's Danny Carey and Red Hot Chili Peppers' Michael "Flea" Balzary –could stretch out in ways their parent bands would not let them. The communal spirit of the music was also enough of a force to make the music industry adjust its cloudy spectacles to take notice (reportedly, the last word in Skinny Puppy’s American Recordings contract is "Pigface"). But don't think for a nanosecond that all that activity and accomplishment was only felt onstage in a self-congratulatory back-slapping marathon: Just prior to his signing to the nothing Records label, Marilyn Manson launched an ad hoc ensemble names Mrs. Scabtree, that featured other like-minded Ft. Lauderdale, Florida freaks. When pressed for details, Manson described the group as "a Pigface-kind of thing." Time has proven that Pigface was an idea that has ignited both musicians and audiences alike.

Pigface's asylum for the musically insane has been laying low since chairman Atkins last took his assembled faithful on an 10-date Christmas 1998 campaign, defeating such tour derailers as serious injury, petulant opening acts and an outbreak of meningitis. You can never really tell what goes on in the engine pinging between Atkins’ ears. The man who hired a mariachi band to play at a Pigface in-store appearance, pondered the idea of rolling outdoor carpeting over the heads of an audience so that the band members could work on their golf game ("Fantastic from the balcony, but not much good from the underneath," he says with hindsight). With the release of The Best of Pigface, anything can-and just might-happen.

"Bill Rieflin once said that we could just put a chair on stage and call it Pigface," Atkins recalls. "I don't think we’d sell many t-shirts though.

"What's next for Pigface? That's for you to know and the world to find out.

Pigface is an industrial music collective directed by remixer/producer/drummer Martin Atkins, who prior to forming the group in 1990, had lent his talents to such outfits as Public Image Ltd., Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, and Killing Joke, as well as heading his own record label, Invisible. During Ministry's 1989-1990 tour in support of their classic The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste album, Atkins came up with the idea of Pigface along with then-Ministry drummer Bill Rieflin. For each album, Atkins would assemble a new lineup of alternative superstars, reflecting the anarchistic ideals of the original punk rock bands of the mid-'70s. Beginning in 1990, Pigface has created albums that range from bracing industrial noise to punk ravers to trance-like atmospherics, including such titles as 1990's Gub, 1991's Welcome to Mexico Asshole, 1992's Fook, 1993's Truth Will Out, 1994's Notes From Thee Underground, 1995's Feels Like Heaven, 1997's A New High in Low, and 1998's Eat Shit, You Fucking Redneck (all of which were issued via Invisible). Since the group's inception, Pigface has seen countless renowned members of the punk/alt-rock community pass through its ranks, including Steve Albini, Martin Atkins, Paul Barker, Jello Biafra, Chris Connelly, Danny Carey (Tool), Duane Denison (the Jesus Lizard), Flea, Chris Haskett (Rollins Band), cEvin Key, Shonen Knife, Lydia Lunch, John Lydon, Trent Reznor, Geordie Walker, Andrew Weiss, and David Yow, among countless others. March of 2001 saw the release of a double-disc, 35-track long compilation, The Best of Pigface: Preaching to the Perverted. The 2003 album Easy Listening... was followed by five remix albums, all incorporating the word "head" into the title (Dubhead, Clubhead, etc.). Fook was reissued in 2005 with two bonus discs. The limited-edition Head Remixes followed a year later. ~ Greg Prato & Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide