Pig (musical project)


Raymond Watts is an English musician, the founding and sole member of the industrial music project PIG, sometimes written as <PIG>.
Watts was a founding 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

Recent activity (2010–present)

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 " 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. 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. In November 2014, Watts approved mixes for an upcoming joint-release EP.
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. 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.
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.
In 2022, PIG released the album The Merciless Light. In 2023, a remixed and remastered version of Candy titled Candy was released.
In 2024, PIG released the album Red Room, featuring Alexis Mincolla of the band 3TEETH on the song Crumbs Chaos & Lies. Also in 2024, PIG released the EP Feast of Agony.
On 30 January 2025, the music video for the song Everything off of the 1996 album Wrecked was uploaded to the PIG YouTube channel, in conjunction with the announcement that a remastered version of the album, containing all of the tracks featured on both the Japanese and U.S. versions of the album, would be released on March 7. This directly follows the 2023 remaster of The Swining/Red Raw & Sore and the 2024 remaster of Sinsation.
November 14, 2025 marked the release of a remix album of tracks from 2022's The Merciless Light titled ''The Merciful Night.''

Musical style

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 or are plays on the titles of popular works or phrases. 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

Raymond Watts is a founding member of KMFDM, and has collaborated with them on several projects both under his own name and his band moniker. 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". Several musicians have performed with both bands, including keyboardist/percussionist En Esch, and guitarists Steve White, Jules Hodgson, and Günter Schulz, and drummer Andy Selway. 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:
In 2024, a deluxe edition of Sin Sex & Salvation was released.

Other collaborations

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.
  • From 1984 to 1986 Watts was sound engineer for Mona Mur.
  • From 1985 to 1989 Watts was a sound engineer for Einstürzende Neubauten.
  • Watts has occasionally collaborated with J. G. Thirlwell, briefly playing bass in Foetus Corruptus and co-writing songs for Steroid Maximus on the album Gondwanaland. Thirlwell, in turn, has cowritten and remixed songs for PIG.
  • Watts recorded music for ex-girlfriend spoken-word artist Sow 's 1994 album Je M'Aime and again for her 1998 album Sick and 2010 album Dog. "Je M'aime" was reissued under the name "Pig/Sow" in 1999.
  • PIG's 1995 album Sinsation was released in the US on Trent Reznor's label Nothing Records. PIG also toured with Reznor's band Nine Inch Nails in the UK.
  • Japanese-based band Schaft employed Watts as a lyricist/vocalist for the 1994 album Switchblade and companion remix collection Switch.
  • In 2001, Watts and KMFDM frontman Sascha Konietzko teamed up with Japanese musicians Atsushi Sakurai and Hisashi Imai to form the project super group Schwein. Schwein released two albums Schweinstein and Son of Schweinstein ; the latter being remixes from the first.
  • Watts has also provided production, mixing, remixing, and/or vocals for Psychic TV, Chemlab, Haloblack, 2-Kut, Hoodlum Priest, Steroid Maximus, H3llb3nt, The Hit Parade, Brain Drive, Buck-Tick, D.I.E., Atsushi Sakurai, Sprung aus den Wolken, The Megaton Men, Mortiis, Judda], Tweaker, Prong, West End and Zos Kia.
  • Watts contributed an original composition to the soundtrack of the computer game MDK2. It plays on the title screen and one of Max's levels.
  • Watts has composed music for several Alexander McQueen fashion shows, including the final show before McQueen's death entitled "Plato's Atlantis".
  • Watts has contributed vocals to the track "Second Coming" by Team Cybergeist
  • In 2020 Watts became a member of industrial supergroup The Joy Thieves by contributing vocals to "Empty Spaces", a song the band recorded for Riveting Music's Tear Down the Walls: A Riveting Tribute to Pink Floyd's The Wall.

    Solo band members

Current members

  • Raymond Watts – vocals, keyboards, programming, guitars
  • En Esch – vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards, programming
  • Steve White – lead guitar, programming
  • Bradley Bills – drums

    Former members

  • Steve Crittel – live guitars
  • Jim McKenchnie – live keyboards
  • Kevin Bass – live drums
  • Michael Watts – keyboards, organ, vocals
  • Karl Hyde – guitars
  • Santos De Castro – drums
  • Imai Hisashi – guitars, noises
  • Olivier Grasset – drums, percussion, programming, production
  • Joanna Peacock – bass
  • Günter Schulz – guitars, programming
  • Jules Hodgson – guitars, bass, keyboards
  • Andy Selway – drums
  • Jason Knotek – live guitars
  • Angel Bartolotta – live drums
  • Mark Gemini Thwaite – lead guitar, bass, synthesizers, programming
  • Gregory "Z. Marr" Steward – guitars, keyboards, programming, production
  • Eric Gottesman – live keyboards
  • Luke Dangler – live lead guitar
  • Ben Christo – lead guitar
  • Martin Eden – guitars, bass, keyboards, programming, production, mixing
  • Jan-Vincent Velazco – drums
  • Galen Waling – drums

    Guest members

  • Alex Hacke – guitars
  • Nikkolai Weidemann – guitars, piano, saxophone
  • Axel Dill – drums, piano, mixing
  • Achim Mennicken – guitars
  • Uwe Wüst – guitars
  • Remo Park – guitars
  • Christian Graupner – percussion, programming
  • J.G. Thirlwell – production
  • John Caffery – production, recording
  • Roli Mosimann – mixing
  • Martin Hawkes – recording, mixing
  • Paul Kendall – mixing
  • Siewert Johannsen – engineering
  • Anna Wildsmith – vocals
  • John Gosling – programming, engineering, mixing
  • Enrico Thomaso – flugelhorn
  • Sascha Konietzko – vocals, synthesizers, production, engineering, mixing, programming
  • Jennifer Ginsberg – vocals
  • Julian Beeston – programming, mixing
  • Carol Anne Reynolds – vocals
  • Sakurai Atsushi – vocals
  • Chris Shepard –
  • Giles Littlefield – production, noises, programming
  • Rob Henry – programming
  • Jennie Bellestar – vocals
  • Ruth McArdle – vocals
  • Lian Warmington – vocals
  • James Reynolds – engineering
  • Ben Drakeford – engineering
  • Jo Maskell – vocals
  • Andrew Bennett – guitars
  • Lisa Millet – vocals
  • Andy Cooke – programming
  • Arianne Schreiber – vocals
  • Bryan Black – vocals, production, mixing
  • Marc Heal – vocals, keyboards, programming
  • Dan Abela – guitars, engineering
  • Nathan Cavaleri – guitars
  • Tim Skold – vocals, keyboards, guitars, programming, production
  • Anita Sylph – vocals
  • Joshua Broughton – guitars
  • Emre Ramazanoglu – keyboards, programming
  • Phil Barry – guitars
  • Ben Lee – violin
  • Sasha Grey – vocals
  • Michelle Martinez – vocals
  • Susannah Doyle – vocals