IN YOUR PIGFACE

As if to elaborate, Atkins begins razzing his companion, tour-mate and Psychic TV veteran Genesis P-Orridge, during this conversation. "Can you hear the evangelist screaming in the background?" Genesis asks after being handed the phone. "He's crazy! I'm actually wearing my Evil Mothers T-shirt with a great big picture of the Virgin Mary with her eyes gouged out. I'm going to go wander and stand in front of him."

After Genesis leaves on his mission, Atkins admits that he enjoys playing on the average listener's fears. While some songs on Underground are listenable--"like `Asphole,'" he says, "which I've heard on the dance floor already, and `Chickasaw,' [which] is very friendly and inviting"--most of the cuts on the album continue the violent and profane pattern established by previous Pigface discs.

"The other tracks on there are the most distorted, nasty, left-field things I've ever heard," he continues. "So there are some tracks that welcome you in, like your mum standing in the doorway with a hot cup of chocolate on a cold winter evening. [But] as soon as you're through the door, she cracks you across the back of the head with a baseball bat, asking, `Where the hell have you been?' I think our first album was a slammed door in people's faces. I think that with this one it's easier to find a way in, but I don't think Pigface will ever be mainstream."

And that's okay, he insists. "I've actually found a reason to get excited again. I consider myself to be very lucky," he announces. "There are so many cynical, twisted, jaded, screwed-up people in this business that could be sober and excited and absolutely fueled with adrenaline. It feels good."

Pigface, with Evil Mothers and Foreskin 500. 8 p.m. Thursday, November 24, Ogden Theatre, 935 East Colfax Avenue, $14, 290-TIXS or 830-2525.