Dec 17, 2020
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# 3,679
Eyehategod: Eyehategod (2014)
Ministry's Filthpig and Unsane's Scattered, Smothered, and Covered (both 1996) prepared me for this and I didn’t even know it. Filthpig was the vert first album I recall that had that sludgy burning feel to it and that’s what had their fans disown them. Unsane’s noise rock credo made them legends and I been fans of theirs for years. Just for the hell of it I jumped into Take As Needed For Pain (1993) but after hearing this, I declare it’s time to really get into these guys. It’s no fault but my own that I should’ve found them earlier.
A lot can happen in fourteen years in-between proper studio albums. They released their sole live record Preaching The “End Time” Message (2001) and compilation Ten Years Of Abuse (And Still Broke) (2005). Mike IX Williams and his ex-girl Alicia Morgan of 13 were arrested on narcotics charges, and drummer Joey LaCaze died only two days after his 42nd birthday of respiratory failure. They’ve also had some live shows and side projects to boot. Fourteen years was as long as Guns N’ Roses took for Chinese Democracy (2008) and also as much for Tool’s Fear Inoculum (2019). That painful wait doesn’t guarantee a great record but for the most part it makes for a sweeter comeback, but I wouldn’t know because I just started with them, you fucking alligator.
The self-titled offering is a mess. A terrible fucking mess. Parallel to the band’s sordid history, it fights its’ own battle of struggling to stand on its own two feet as it avoids getting knocked down. Tempo changes, aggressions, charges, and pullbacks are unpredictable and unstable. Anyone who has money riding on anything is almost guaranteed to go broke. The only few constants are William’s wretched vocals screetching and wheezing all throughout. Brian Patton and Jimmy Bower’s guitars roughhouse with Gary Mader’s bass and all refuse play anything less than a dirty, scummy, sick 45-minute game. And John LaCaze makes his final appearance here posthumously, continuously pelting and chipping away at drums until you can’t fucking move.
I can tell that after fourteen years of starvation does this record wants out and shows its vengeance. That pit bull’s name is “Agitation! Propaganda!”, a series of furious rope-a-dope punches that’s distributed to everyone in attendance right before “Trying To Crack The Hard Dollar” struts its’ hot shit across the whiskey-drenched town streets. A moment where everyone takes notice of Eyehategod’s slippery-slope sludge goodness arrives with “Parish Motel Sickness” where those grease-fire riffs and Mader’s basslines dig in while LaCaze’s smattering drums are on point. Williams’ lyrics get twisted and inverted to a situation of indecision (”sometimes I’m stuck together / sometimes I’m so unglued) and contradiction (”it takes its own life / then takes a life of its own”) while he heaves on by.
More fun moments to be had on their self-titled such as “Framed To The Wall”, having Eyehategod go head-on thrash at high-speeds before switching itself up in so many ways in such short time that no one could keep track. “Robitussin And Rejection” still shows Williams’ at his lyrical wretched and at the band’s most driven yet; both still putting it in the bank. Without question their biggest moment is “Flags And Cities Abound”. Williams spouts prose of his imprisonment for drug charges; his vocals simultaneously vacate the left channel as spoken word and right for screaming screed before the outfit spends it all for its’ murkiest and most sinister moment. Mader, Bower, and Patton’s gargantuan grandfather-clock riffs sluggishly tear you open with a jagged knife and LaCaze’s drums pop off like a long-string of M80′s. “Medicine Noose” gears itself up like a bull scraping its’ hoof against the dirt before it takes off into the crowd for the fucking kill, leading into IX’s last hack-and-wheeze special “The Age Of Bootcamp” to burn the album out in a smoking, heaping conclusion.
2000 almost declared the NOLA / Brooklyn outfit’s medicated legacy said-and-done, and chances are bands on massive hiatuses either re-charge, put their shit back together, or still find some fight in them to go at it again. An album such as this reminds us that they never lost it. Not even the passing of LaCaze and some drug-fueled events that could’ve derailed Eyehategod for good didn’t even stop them to put out one of the sickest wildfires ever documented in the last decade. With a new single “High Risk Trigger” (’20) making way for A History Of Nomadic Behavior to be released in March, Eyehategod fans thankfully will wait only half as long to see if they can survive another slaughter.
I like this band more than I like people at the moment.
Eyehategod. For the Sick. Here;s the Southern Discomfort demo from the Rarities compilation album of the same name. Can we get some more love for NOLA Sludge metal? -Dan