Album of the day: Eyehategod – Confederacy of Ruined Lives (Century Media 2000)

EyeHateGod - Confederacy of Ruined Lives

Mike Williams and Jimmy Bower of New Orleans sludge-meisters Eyehategod will be the featured guests on this weekend’s (May 21-24) edition of Full Metal Jackie’s nationally syndicated radio show.To see a full list of stations carrying the program and when it airs, go to FullMetalJackieRadio.com.

Here’s what Roadburn’s Drew Webster had to say about Eyehategod’s Confederacy of Ruined Lives in 2000: Lovers of self hatred and bludgeoning riffs rejoice! Eyehategod are back for real this time. Sure, they released Southern Discomfort not long ago, but that didn’t have any new material on it.  Confederacy of Ruined Lives is the first new EHG release since Dopesick in 1996.

For a long time, it looked as though drug addiction had taken its toll and ruined the band. They left a legacy of two classic records  In The Name of Suffering and Take As Needed For Pain and the slightly less great Dopesick. Among their accomplishments, EHG are credited with being the founders of sludge core. With its hateful, bleak, anguished vocals set against extra-slow sabbath inspired riffing, sludge was one of the most vital new genres of metal to emerge from the 1990’s.

Thanks to bands like Grief, Corrupted, Buzz-oven, Sour Vein, Bongzilla, Weedeater, Floor, Negative Reaction and now Eyehategod again, sludge seems poised to have even more impact in the 2000’s.
Charging straight out of the grave, Confederacy of Ruined Lives shows no signs of rigor mortis. Quite the opposite actually. It is still the same classic Eyehategod sound but now it’s a little faster, a little punchier, a little better.

The depth of the riff writing is the best of any Eyehategod release yet. Subtle twists and colorations unveil themselves with each passing listen. The production is a little brighter and cleaner, which makes the overall sound even more intense. The poorer production quality of  In The Name of Suffering went really well with the general sound and feeling of the music (it is sludge, after all), but progress sometimes has it’s price.

Musically, Confederacy… is superior to their other releases, so that’s the trade off. Standout tracks include the lurching stop time stutter of ‘Inferior and Full of Anxiety’, the punishing unison riffing of ‘Self Medication Blues’ and the hate and feedback fest ‘.001%.’ EHG even strays toward High on Fire territory on the relentless ‘The Concussion Machine Process.’

Summation: classic Eyehategod. No, make that slightly better than classic Eyehategod. Welcome back, we’ve missed you.
Drew Webster

Tags: album of the day, eyehategod, kirk windstein, nola, sludge

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 6:33 am and is filed under 2009, News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.