New Orleans EYEHATEGOD is the snarling, bilious sound of dead-end America. Since 1988, theyve been a soundtrack for the troubled masses. Ugly music for ugly times. Thats the sense of disenchantment and disease that lies the heart of their latest and sixth full-length album, A History of Nomadic Behavior. Anyone familiar with EHGs story knows this is survivors music, a sound unto itself where Sabbathian riffs are meted out with a caustic anger that goes beyond punk. Thats been the blueprint since guitarist Jimmy Bower (also of NOLA supergroup, Down) founded the band in 1988 with vocalist Mike IX Williams joining not long after. With a discography including sludge-punk mainstays like In the Name of Suffering (1990), Take as Needed for Pain (1993) Dopesick (1996) or 2014s eponymously-titled LP, released in the US through Housecore Records, EHG laid the cracked foundation for their infamous and influential sound. A History of Nomadic Behavior finds the band, now slimmed to a four-piece rounded out by bassist Gary Mader and drummer Aaron Hill, leaner and meaner than ever; road-hardened by recent tours with Black Label Society, Corrosion of Conformity and Napalm Death in the US and abroad. From the bitter pill of opener Built Beneath the Lies to the hypnotic haze of closer Every Thing, Every Day its clear that that EYEHATEGOD hasnt slowed or mellowed with time. In fact, its quite the opposite. This is disorienting, uneasy listening. Music that still very much hurts.
