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In the Year of the Pig, "Jamón"
This Chapel Hill five piece is at least superficially crafting big, noisy rock songs, with more than a passing nod to classic grunge, but with an approach that is closer in spirit to the free jazz configurations of Ornette Coleman than any traditional metal group. With hard panned dual drums, and bass and guitar segregated to left and right channels, respectively, the result is a highly structured racket that runs the gamut of rapid fire hardcore to slow, lugubrious sludge.
 
In many ways this is a "supergroup" of the Chapel Hill avant rock scene, with the band’s five members being involved in a multitude of other projects (Horseback, The Hem of His Garment, Mount Moriah, and a ton of others), but the guys gel together as a single unit here.The opener "You Want to Live, But We Will Die Free" initially starts with noisy guitar and bass drone, as drummers Jenks Miller (right channel) and Dave Cantwell (left channel) duel it out before all comes together in a surge of noise and drum freakouts, the intensity ebbing and flowing for the first third of the piece.Afterward, it launches into an adrenaline soaked propulsive take on krautrock, with gasped vocals bringing a bit of hardcore punk to the proceedings.The track eventually slows down and frays apart into pulses of noise and big, pummeling drums.
The "short" track (the only one less than ten minutes long), "For the Glory of Man" begins tentatively with amp hum and a bit of rhythmic interplay before quickly getting up to speed, a mostly straight-forward bit of bass driven, grunge tinted rock.Unsurprisingly a dense stormcloud of sound, it lurches towards the rapid pace of hardcore in its closing moments."And Remember the Good Times" is far less content to maintain a consistent style throughout its 15-plus minute duration:initially opening with a hard rock sound and vocals that wouldn’t be out of place coming from a dive bar somewhere, the track soon goes into a bit of funk, dissonant noise, and heavy metal pounding before finally settling in as painfully slow sludge rock that gets more and more drawn out as the track goes on.
The rhythmic conflict that opens "Workin' for Nothin'" initially encroaches on "numetal" territory without ever becoming as awful as that genre is before settling in on a more psychedelic rock sound.Between that and the mantra-like vocals, it starts to take on the spacey repetition of stuff from the Freek label from the 1990s, which eventually opens up and allows guitar squeal and noisier bits to take the lead.Closer "Using Not the Tools of our Trade" is propelled by monolithic bass leads, while the guitar is abused for textural purposes, all the while dual mechanized drumming pounds away.Eventually the noise and distortion is stripped away, going to a cyclic structure that’s rather conventional before being stretched out again to heavy and painfully slow noise that, in its dying moments, slams into grindcore blast beats and jazzy bass, ending the disc with an adrenaline rush.
Unabashedly happy to "rock", In the Year of the Pig does so with a more diverse approach than most, mixing the fluid structures of free jazz with hardcore, rock, and metal flourishes in a unique way, never feeling disparate or an exercise in forced genre hopping.Instead, it is complex, but simultaneously raw, coating the complexity of jazz in the raw power and sweat of pounding rock, to wonderful ends.
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