Labels: Eyeball
Review by: Alex Deller
Some bands are just evil – fucked up, nasty and evil. Many bands try to give off this image – just look to all the dumbass metalcore schmucks plumbing the satanic vein, splashing some blood on their artwork, singing about demons, dabbling with minor-key acoustic faddle and ripping of At the Gates or whatnot, but it just doesn’t wash with me. Clean cut and straightedge, you just know they wouldn’t dare offend mother at the family table. Turn the page and you have Burning Witch, Corrupted and the like, bands which make me hide my head under the pillow, I want them to stop but something just makes me keep on listening, the same kind of process as you having to bite a wooden spoon or a piece of tin foil, knowing it’ll make you shudder but carrying on none the less. Enter Eyehategod, unsavoury fucko’s to the nth degree, a band who I’m going to have some difficulty in describing seeing as every band that sounds like this gets compared to them, man alive – they’re a goddamn institution.
So, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think this band invented *this* sound: the leaden Black Sabbath riffs coupled with the shrieking vocals, an obvious penchant for all things pharmaceutical and the kind of lyrics which make me almost glad there’s no lyric sheet. For a UK example just think Iron Monkey, you know, the kind of stuff your dad would’ve maybe rocked out to back in the day if there wasn’t such a filthy-throated, black-lunged vocalist spewing bile, garbage and shit over the top of it.
This is material culled from various 7″s and the Dopesick recording sessions. Nine tracks of quality heavier-than-a-bag-of-spanners sludge rock, cut it open and it doesn’t bleed blood but a thick black ichor kinda stuff, nasty as you like but compelling all the same. Awesomely heavy, depressing to the max, yes yes yes, how many good words can I use? This all culminates with the sixteen or so minute long ‘dopesick jam’, fuck yeah, ridden with feedback and anguished screams, nasty music that still manages to groove like a drunken motherfucker.