POP MUSIC REVIEW : Pigface Casts a Few Pearls at Roxy

Cynics sometimes claim that all industrial bands sound the same. This is not entirely off the mark. Stark alienation, the genre’s trademark, isn’t the most versatile of emotions, all the beats are similar, and band membership seems as free-flowing and incestuous as it ever was in the blues-rock ‘60s. Plus, almost all the musicians involved have at one point or another recorded with Ministry’s Alain Jorgenson, who heads up the Wax Trax industrial-rock empire.

Many of the key musicians, though conspicuously not Jorgenson, play with the all-star industrial ensemble Pigface, which played to a sweaty Roxy crowd Sunday and didn’t sound that industrial at all. Some of the songs actually had melodies and hooks, and there wasn’t an alienating moment in the show.

Pigface, kind of the Blind Faith of industrial disco, is fronted by the singers for Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails and includes members of Killing Joke, Ministry and Revolting Cocks.

The band seemed dedicated to the sound that results when two talented drummers whang at their instruments in unison, something deep and tribal.

Everything else--the skitterish post-PiL guitar, the washes of white noise, even the piercing, 3 a.m.-feeding screams of the guy from Skinny Puppy--was subordinated to the beat.