Pig Pen - Mental Madness
Flatspot Records
Released on June 27th, 2025
I love a supergroup. CSNY? Hook it to my veins. Mike Watt’s touring band from 1995? Why yes, I would love to listen to a live album with Watt, Eddie Vedder and 3/5th of the original Foo Fighters line-up (yes, Dave Grohl’s on drums) playing songs from Ball-Hog or Tugboat? and a Madonna cover for some reason. These are supergroups I can get behind. Of course, not every supergroup works. For every Temple of the Dog, there’s a Velvet Revolver. So where does Pig Pen fit?
When it was announced that Celebrity Chef Matty Matheson formed a new Hardcore band with fellow Niagara-region luminaries Daniel & Ian Romano (Daniel Romano’s Outfit & the criminally under-rated Attack in Black), Tommy Major (Daniel Romano’s Outfit & Young Guv) and Wade MacNeil (Alexisonfire), I was excited.
The story behind the band is simple - five friends from the Niagara music scene were bored during the lockdown and needed to do something to pass the time. They wrote 10 songs, recorded them in a 2-day window and Mental Madness is the result. It’s an album rooted in all five members shared love of 1980s style hardcore, with clear touchstones like Black Flag’s My War and the Cro-Mags’ The Age of Quarrel. The focus of the lyrics is on what Matheson describes as “mental health shit” but the band is about joy and friendship, and it shows in the ease in which these 10 songs come together.
From the opening notes of “Rabid Beach”, it’s clear that this is a genuine band. The rhythm section is locked into a punishing groove, with Ian Romano’s lightning-fast drumming and blistering solos from MacNeil.
The band’s namesake track “Pig Pen” starts out slow, with layers of controlled feedback that remind me of late period Alexisonfire, which, given MacNeil’s role in the band comes as no surprise. Suddenly the band is off to the races, yet Matty never sounds like he’s behind the beat. Just as suddenly as the first time switch, the band drops back into the same slow burn from the start, with Matty growling ‘Pig Pen’ repeatedly in a register much lower than anything I’ve ever heard him use.
The band released “Mental Mentality” as the promotional single for a reason. It’s the strongest song on the record, featuring Wade MacNeil in his familiar role singing backup. The lyrics evoke the time in which they were conceived. “When the fog grows/when the isolation begins/when the fear settles in/can the heart never win?” On the one hand, it’s very clearly about mental health, the challenges and crises that so many experienced during the lockdown. On the other, they could be about covid itself, the brain fog, the confinement and isolation, the fear. The words are simple but evocative, with the guttural bark of both singers giving voice to a feeling so many of us shared in the darkest of times.
“Problem Mind” continues the exploration of mental health and depression. and the album closer “XJXIXDX”, which at over 6 minutes long makes up a full 25% of the album’s otherwise brisk 24-minute runtime. Despite the length, the song never drags. It’s a densely layered adventure of a track, pushing the classic hardcore template to the absolute limits, building to a furious crescendo of feedback. Most of the songs feel very much like demos, whereas “XJXIXDX” makes me wonder what direction the record would have taken with the benefit of more time.
There is something special about a band of friends exploring mental health, shared anxieties and finding joy in shared catharsis. Obviously, every member of this supergroup is rather busy with their regular gigs. Romano’s outfit tours relentlessly and releases new music at a remarkable pace; Alexisonfire is an active concern again; and The Bear was picked up for a 5th season, to say nothing of the growing Matheson restaurant empire. That said, if an opportunity presents itself for Pig Pen to make another record, I really hope they do.