Steve Austin, the man whose gloriously deranged mind state forms the axis by which the cataclysmic sonic universe of Today Is The Day revolves, is not exactly the kind of person you would trade places with, but for reasons that have little to do with his actual madness. Sadness Will Prevail, the oft-maligned follow up to the critically lauded In The Eyes Of God, was a sprawling, ambitious one of a kind descent into madness experience like none before it, yet was heavily criticised for being overly long and self-indulgent. Undeniably flawed, arguably by the very nature of its design, but an intensely personal odyssey of sorts, with Austin’s not inconsiderable emotional wounds laid threadbare beyond the safety of comfort, perhaps too revealingly so, more than the average fan would have expected or desired. Naturally it went down in lead balloon fashion and in a double whammy, was totally eclipsed by the sheer monumental power of Mastodon’s debut, a band formed by the two best musicians to ever pass through Austin’s revolving door.

At face value Kiss The Pig appears to be crucially stabilising, 36 minutes of relentless noise metal that begins with the click of a shotgun, the ensuing blastbeats providing the literal follow through. Now with brevity returning to the equation and the juice turned up higher than ever before, resulting in their most extreme album to date, it would seem that Today Is The Day are once again at the top of their game, except for one niggling concern: it’s fucking boring. In his single minded pursuit to detonate the field, Austin unwisely relegates dynamics to the sideline, offering little more than undisciplined expressions of rage wholly lacking in craft and purpose. The clinical production only worsens matters, blunting the impact even further, while the new recruits show very little musical finesse.

“This Machine Kills Fascists” proves itself an exception though, with its jagged staccato riffing and punk-like fire, while “Birthright” is a creepy doom like mantra but the genuinely unsettling moments are few and far between, and that’s the only real shock at work here. It’s difficult to predict what the future holds for Today Is The Day, and since re-recruiting Kelleher and Dailor is no longer an option, he may be forced to dismiss his troops and start de novo as this unit is firing almost nothing but blanks.

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