Hold Back the Curse, Hogpig (TXMF Records)
CD Review
21.March.2007

Last time around, Hogpig nearly carved a hole in its cheek with Le Porc Du Porc. Crunchy southern-rock riffs and cymbal-crazy drums were a mere backdrop to goofy debut songs like “Fuck You Mike Love,” and the result was more irony than rock. Sure, it was ballistic, but the EP was too busy satirizing the likes of Jackyl and Molly Hatchet to truly best them.

            It’s fitting that the cover image of full-length debut Hold Back The Curse is simple and stark--one dull, ugly-looking meat cleaver. In their shameless, 31-minute mashup of Skynyrd and The Misfits, Hogpig hasn’t lost its sense of humor--unless you think the Denton quartet’s serious about song titles like “Kill the Wolf, Eat the Wolf” and “Kablooie”--but the smirk on their faces is no longer a crutch for an album that sounds bloody serious.

            The EP only hinted to this album’s utter dedication to the dirty riff. Curse throws all extravagant lead guitar parts into the ditch so that the band’s one-two rhythm guitar combo can let loose with wicked, intricate near-symphonies. You really have to zoom out and examine the album’s entire scope to understand Hogpig’s serious dedication to its rock craft, though if you want more immediate proof of this, consider tracks 5-8 as a combined super-song.

This opens with a brutal one-minute instrumental, which gives way to “Blade Hits Bone”--“The time is right / for blood tonight,” lead singer Ian Johnson grunts over syncopated three-riff blasts before a beeping bit of affected guitar floats over the whole mess. That song melts right into “Kill the Wolf,” a violent, campy-movie tale of survival that zags in all erratic, head-bobbing directions, which eventually explodes into “Hammer for One and Two Guitars,” a death-metal shout-stomp that caps off the 11-minute hard-rock masterpiece.

Johnson’s drawl-heavy shouts ‘n squeals, Colin Carter’s thud-happy drums and the wild axe duo of Jason Goodman and Brian Cholewinski make up a perfect, complimentary quartet for this southern-lovin’ sound, but two things propel this album above the fray for both the average hard-rock nuts and the snooty record collectors--the songwriting (which is stellar far beyond the four-song suite) and the production. Curse is loud, balanced and pristine, and if Matt Barnhart’s capable hands at the Echo Lab twiddled knobs for more rock and metal records, the world of loud music would be a much better place.

            Curse would be a mega-hit in a Dallas radio world of semi-old, tearing up Q102 and 97.1 The Eagle’s playlists (methinks current station 93.3 The Bone would find tons of fans if they played this disc non-stop), but no matter. North Texas has its next great cult classic. The Curse is loose. 

Hogpig celebrates the CD's release with two weekend concerts: Friday, March 23, at Rubber Gloves, and Saturday, March 24, at the Double Wide. Tre Orsi opens at both, while Cartright and Dove Hunter perform at the Denton and Dallas shows respectively. Buy the album at those shows, Good Records, or pester the Webmasters at TXMF Records.