Pigmy Love Circus frontman Mike Savage sure does sing about his nuts a lot. “I’ve got 20-pound fists and balls made of steel,” he growls on the opening cut of his band’s latest. “Come around to my yard, we’ll see how they feel.” On the very next tune, Mr. Savage refers to the size of his gonads before the chorus hits. Such it is with the Pigmys, four swarthy, biker-rock brutes who definitely don’t put the toilet seat down.

Aside from a minor radio hit in the early ’90s, Pigmy Love Circus is best known for counting Tool drummer Danny Carey among its ranks. In his full-time outfit, Carey burns up the charts with dark prog metal. Here, he mostly ignites his farts.

The Power of Beef, the Pigmys’ first album in 12 years, comes on hard, with big greasy guitars and songs about sex, drugs, and werewolves. Savage sounds as if he’s either gargling Pabst or — like Clutch’s Neil Fallon — choking on a bong hit. “All I ever really want to do is lay around and drink a million brews,” he wails on one of Beef‘s many slow and slimy grinders. It’s a fitting goal for a band whose sound is pretty much one prolonged beer belch fed through a Marshall stack.

This article appears in Jul 14-20, 2004.