“SONG FOR EWE” is the feature where artists & music people beloved by VELVET SHEEP choose an obscure song they’ve been listening to that day. Today it’s a welcome return to one of the best bands in Britain, the hypnotically pulverising Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs whose brand new third full length album “Viscerals” (out this Friday on Rocket Recordings) I’ve anticipated with a unseemly slaver, and whose singer I’m lucky enough to indirectly work with in our respective day jobs when I look for music to license for one of my regular CBBC productions. “Viscerals” was recorded in a self-enforced lock-in at guitarist Sam Grant’s studio, before barely 80% of the album had been envisaged, with the limitations of the four walls and the claustrophobia of five sweaty guys bouncing around, sparking an intensely furious and incandescently brilliant new album. They emerged wide eyed ready to slay a burgeoning audience, just hitting their absolute stride, with a clamour of attention and a sold out nationwide tour, only to be sent back indoors for the untimely uncertainty of this crazy and cruel Coronavirus crisis and its unwelcome but necessary lockdown. Recently guitarist Adam Ian Sykes said, “We definitely thrive under pressure. It’s stressful but that stress seems to manifest itself in a positive way”, well the pressure’s truly on now, and something that can help you, whoever reads this at home now, is the neolithic, tectonic plate shifting heavy metal exuberance of “Viscerals”. If Joe Wicks can get you working out your core muscles, something that can really help strengthen your neck is songs like the mighty “Reducer”. And with it’s bellow at the top of your lungs epithet “Ego kills everything” this is also a workout that will not only stretch your trapezium but like Ian McKaye once said with Minor Threat it’ll “Flex Your Head”. It’s a truly visceral thrill to have back on these pages, the inestimably powerful and edifyingly amenable Matt Baty! While we’re talking about necks, too here’s their latest video for “Rubbernecker”. I’ll stick my neck out and say this is heavy metal’s answer to Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”… When Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs lock in on a groove they’re like a rabid dog with a radioactive bone. My absolute favourite on the album is 9 minute epic/fever dream “Halloween Bolson”, whose sonic quality is like the candy striped revolving barber’s pole, kind of the rock equivalent of the continually ascending Shephard tone – where you can’t really hear where it begins or ends, it’s just continually spiralling upwards, always in precise control but also ready to spectacularly implode given the right signal. This is a band that combines so many others I like – the taut rhythmic pulse of The Birthday Party, the intoxicating arid riffs of Kyuss or Sleep, the agricultural British bluntness of Black Sabbath and the Hawkwind like wind tunnel psych vocals. And with an album called “Viscerals” you can’t get much more of a Ronseal title, or a Cuprinol like dark stain on your soul. Sure it’s not totally uplifting but it is seismically cathartic, and completely easy to lose yourself in, like a forest where the wolf ate your breadcrumb trail. Anyway, enough blathering on from me, what tune did Matt select for your locked down listening pleasure? It’s a chip off the old block, and a pleasingly fresh and frenzied offering, so  without further ado, this is Matt Baty’s “song for ewe”… “This is a brand new song from Newcastle band BLÓM. They’re good friends of ours and were set to support us on our album release tour. Obviously that’s been shelved for a...