It’s been four years since New Orleans based Eyehategod last released a full-length album, and it’s been an even longer road for the band members themselves. The new record, Confederacy Of Ruined Lives, is drug-whirled hardcore blues at its scorching finest. There is no letup from this batch of southern-fried malcontents, as the album teeters on feedback-drenched noise and psychotic crust drawl.
Lead singer Mike Williams sounds beaten and worn from years of physically abusing himself, while his raspy screech has evolved into a hardcore-death growl. The grooves that were so prominent on Take As Needed For Pain and Dopesick have reduced in number to make room for crushing sludge-punk with hints of Sabbath instead of the other way around. “Revelation/Revolution” pounds slow and evil tonnage, like a heroin needle dragging up a forearm. “Self Medication Blues” grooves like EHG of old, and sounds like they dug up their Skynard roots and doused them with adrenochrome. “Inferior And Full Of Anxiety” could be an ode to fellow crust-mongers Buzzov*en, with half-speed creaking contortions scattered among bludgeoning reverb.
Once again, EHG speaks. And once again they have done nothing to boast their chances of being taken seriously as a metal outfit. They are still the kings of the swamp, depressive as all hell, and sick beyond any terminal disease. Take their dirty needle of torment and inject it alongside a bottle of shitty whiskey. These boys are all about the drug-induced paranoid delusion of life, and Confederacy… is their stamp of disapproval for Y2K. You can’t fuck with sickly blues, and EHG doesn’t care if you try. Their world is as twisted as a New Orleans back alley during Mardi Gras, and their depraved existence sounds even better on this one.
+ rick hinkson
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