Pigface Leader Finds Joy in Brutal Genre : Drummer Martin Atkins is ‘pathetically enthusiastic,’ but his cheerfulness isn’t reflected in the group’s harsh new album, ‘Fook.’

Happy-go-lucky . . . carefree . . . easygoing . . . team player.

Those aren’t terms generally associated with industrial-rock musicians, who tend to be brooding, solitary, suspicious artistes whose manners reflect the brutal snarl of their music. Think of Ministry’s Al Jourgensen, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, Skinny Puppy’s Nivek Ogre.

Meet Martin Atkins, the drummer and anchor-member of Pigface, an industrial-rock collective that, with its ever-changing lineup, is more or less the genre’s only supergroup.

“I am delighted and pathetically enthusiastic,” said Atkins, 33, on the phone recently from Denver just before the opening show of Pigface’s U.S. tour, which comes to the Whisky on Monday. “I feel like a 10-year-old kid in a candy store.”

The cheerfulness in his voice is a sharp contrast to Pigface’s music, which on the new “Fook” album is as relentlessly harsh as any other industrialists’. And Atkins’ history makes his upbeat attitude even more surprising.

Swept up by punk in his native London in the late ‘70s, Atkins eventually studied under the masters of the scowl. In 1979, he began a five-year tenure in John Lydon’s Public Image Limited and later signed on with the angry post-punk band Killing Joke. Then in 1989--after moving to Chicago, where he set up a company called Invisible--a record, production, management and marketing combine--he served as a touring member of Jourgensen’s Ministry, along with Reznor and Ogre.

Atkins’ happiness is something of a surprise even to him.

“I thought about six years ago that I would be jaded and cynical with this business by now,” he said, praising Invisible for giving him the freedom to explore music on his own terms.

“I thought I’d be gardening now and talking to my children, blah blah blah, about my days in PiL and how it was a drag. But I’m in this great situation with a bunch of ego-less people and it’s a joy.”

Pigface was, in effect, born from that Ministry tour, and from the start it was designed by Atkins as a fluid entity, with personnel changing not just with each album and tour, but sometimes with each concert. For this tour and album, Ogre and KMFDM’s En Esch are more or less stable participants, with former Fetchin Bones singer Hope Nicholls also in the road version. But there’s no telling who might be on hand any given night; past guests have ranged from Black Francis of the Pixies to a bagpipe player and even a marching band.

“In Pigface, there’s no such thing as a mistake,” Atkins said of the spontaneity that is essential to the group. “When you go to a town, you meet your friends for a beer or something. We have our friends meet us on stage. We try to have the variable in the shows be those people and our moods.”

POP DATEBOOK

Faith No More will headline Jan. 22 at the Hollywood Palladium. Tickets are on sale today. . . . Two shows go on sale Sunday for the Universal Amphitheatre: Freddie Jackson on Jan. 3 and Robert Cray on Jan. 30. . . . Los Lobos will perform a concert tonight at the Roscoe Ingalls Auditorium of East L.A. College to raise funds for extracurricular activities at three Los Angeles-area high schools.

O.C. POP DATEBOOK (F7)

Ofra Haza will be at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Feb. 18.