And how did Weedeater frontman “Dixie” Dave Collins blow off his big toe? Oh, he was cleaning his favorite shotgun. For any of you non-American Obelisk attendees out there, let me explain something to you: this shit happens in this country. All the time. We are all fucking insane, and in case you haven’t watched the news, um, ever, incredibly dangerous people, even to ourselves. Hell, especially to ourselves. Especially ourselves and brown people. Actually, to pretty much everyone.

While I don’t necessarily have a favorite shotgun (or a gun at all, let alone many, which would necessitate an entire rack), my heart goes out to ol’ Nine Toe Collins, who obviously didn’t intend on shooting his toe off, and finds his plans to record with Steve Albini similarly obliterated. It’s a bummer all around. Here’s what the band, via the PR wire, had to say about it:

Hi folks,
As most of you know, here in the Weedeater camp we pride ourselves on a long tradition of shooting our band in the proverbial foot right before we’re supposed to do something important. Whether it’s a big tour, a recording session, or whatever else we’re supposed to do, invariably we will find some way to try and thwart our grandiose plans. Well, it’s no different for this recording session, except that this time we really did shoot ourselves in the foot. In fact we regret to inform all of you that this weekend, Dixie Dave shot his big toe off whilst cleaning his favorite shotgun. Yup, that’s right. When reached for comment, Mr. Collins gave a quote that speaks for itself: ‘It wasn’t my intention to shoot off my big toe. This really fucking sucks and the pain is unbearable.’

Mr. Collins’ doctors have advised that he is to be bed-ridden for the next few weeks during his recovery. This will obviously affect the recording session (and the few surrounding shows in Jan./Feb.), which will now have to be postponed until after the March/April “nine-toe” tour. Said tour is still 100 percent on, however, so check back soon for updates on venues and exact dates. It looks like the support bands will be awesome and the band is really stoked to play this new material after touring for so many years on the same basic set. Yeah… we knew that too, sorry but we’re about to make good on it. And of course after all, we gotta keep workin’, like workin’ men do. Shooting your big toe off isn’t free, for fuck’s sake!

So to re-cap…Keko sacrificed his pinkie for Down/Melvins, Shep broke his hand for Today is the Day, and now Dixie has generously offered up his big toe for Steve Albini to nibble on. Unless overtly fond of Limburger cheese and rotten flesh, Master Steve is advised to decline. Good day. — Weedeater

Mankind is unkind, man…

Not to be confused with the Philadelphia act of the same name, Michigan’s Balboa — known to the rest of us as Balboa MI — are a five-piece sludge outfit slinging hate like monkeys throw poop. On their new EP, the grammatically incorrect New Means to a End (Eaten Alive Records), they blast their way through four tracks in under 15 minutes, offering a truer representation of the In the Name of Suffering aesthetic than most Eyehategod followers could dream of.

Like that album, New Means to a End has its roots in an evil cousin of punk and hardcore, twisted and molded by time into something more sinister. Balboa MI play their sludge fast (for the most part) and make no apologies about it. There are tempo shifts, both sudden and telegraphed, but their intensity and their fuck-all remain in tact throughout. Before I knew it, I’d been through the EP three times. “Wounds I’ve Sewn,” “New Means to a End,” “One Condom, Zero Hour” and “Black Lung” are each about as visceral as this genre gets, guitarists Justin Collard and Ray Nelson thickly riffing out while vocalist Jarrad Collard screams like a fucking madman across the proceedings.

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I’ve been hesitant to post a live review of Monday night’s Eyehategod show in Brooklyn for a couple reasons. First and foremost, I’m not the world’s biggest Eyehategod fan. I dig it, obviously, but for me to sit here and tell you that I’ve followed the New Orleans sludge masters since the early-’90s days of In the Name of Suffering and Take as Needed for Pain would just be dishonest. I own the albums, and several others, but I’m hardly Mr. Ground Floor EHG. I’m not Johnny Come Lately either, but in some ways, I feel underqualified to write about them.

Likewise, for me to sit here and say, “Well man, Eyehategod sure did kick ass in Brooklyn” — even though they did — would be boring as hell. It was my third Europa show in a month, packed as hell, and I was still glad to be there. That’s saying something in itself. And yeah, Eyehategod were great. Jimmy Bower rules, Brian Patton rules, Mike Williams stood on stage and accused us northerners of thinking the south is ignorant, called us motherfuckers and told us he loved us. It was a good show. I’m just not sure how much more there is to say about it than that.

I got there just before Unearthly Trance went on. It was late for a Monday, but don’t ask me for the particulars. I know I didn’t get back to the valley until 3AM, but I wasn’t really checking my watch before that, so whenever it was, it was. They played about 30 seconds of their first song before blowing their bass head and having to find a replacement. To their credit, they gave an okay showing once they got started again. Neither am I the world’s biggest Unearthly Trance fan, and seeing them play in New York at this point is hardly out of the ordinary, but I wasn’t pissed for having to watch them either.

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While in Maryland last Thursday and Friday for Stoner Hands of Doom X — the allegedly last in the 10 year tenure of the festival, which continued without me through Sunday — I managed to sneak away from the main room in Krug’s Place for a while and hit the bar area, where there was set up one lonely vendor with a ton of good shit. Most of it wasn’t necessarily SHoD-applicable, but had I needed to purchase a bootleg copy of Power Metal or Projects in the Jungle by Pantera, I could have done so easily on my way to the bathroom.

Power Metal is hilarious, by the way, if you’ve never heard it.

Uncharacteristically, I only grabbed two CDs from his several laid out boxes thereof. The first was Croatan’s Curse of the Red Queen and the second was Sonic Witchcraft, by Soulpreacher. Both were maybe five bucks, about the price I was paying for a Leinenkugel at the bar, and though the former features such good time hits as “Gravity 1, Sisyphus 0″ and “Rebel from the Waist Down,” it was the Soulpreacher record that stuck out as more of a surprise.

Maybe that’s because I knew nothing about the band and only bought the disc because, like the Croatan, it was released on Man’s Ruin, but either way, when I popped it in my car player to listen, the out and out misery of the sludge emanating from the speakers was unbelievable. I was surprised to learn in the decade since Sonic Witchcraft’s release (and with a new lineup) the band has adopted a more European doom style, influenced by Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, but there’s no taking away from the wholly American tinge to 10-minute opener “Blues for a Blackened World” or the Southern death-boogie of “Empty and Hollow.” They’re from North Carolina, whether they like it or not.

They debuted their new sound and two new guitarists replacing Mike Avery with 2004’s Lost Words demo but eeked out another EP, When the Black Sunn Rises… the Holy Men Burn (Game Two Records) with the original lineup in 2000 and a demo in 2002 before Avery left for law school (“Your honor, I’d like this Eyehategod riff to be read into evidence”). They’ve allegedly got a new album called All the Drugs are Failing, but damned if it’s for sale on their MySpace or website. There’s a couple tracks from it on the MySpace anyway and it’s nowhere near as skin-curdling as their earlier work, so maybe it’s for the best. In the meantime, I’ve got Sonic Witchcraft drilling a hole in my eardrum and I think I’m starting to like it. Hail the fuzz of “Sunday Morning Revelation.”

When I proposed to 12 Eyes guitarist/vocalist Ryan Lynch the interview that follows, I pitched it to him as an exit interview, like human resources does when you leave a corporate job, to find out how your experience was working there. I wanted to know how 12 Eyes, now that they were leaving it, felt about the scene in their native NYC. With Lynch in the city proper and drummer Joe Wood (also of long-running sludge rockers Borgo Pass) and bassist Joe Rega out on Long Island, their perspective on Manhattan and beyond was bound to be worth investigation.

Sure enough, I was right. Lynch, whose relocation to New Mexico has put the band on hiatus if not actually broken it up, took the time to reflect on some of 12 Eyes‘ glories and follies. Having seen them more than several times myself and been lucky enough to consider each member of the band a friend, I can attest that the good-time vibe to which he alludes on behalf of himself, Wood and Rega is true and was always a big part of what made a 12 Eyes show so unique. No irony, no bullshit, no posturing, just a bizarre positivity cloaked in doomed-out riffs and blood-curdling cackles. They were like Bongzilla if Bongzilla drank three cases of Red Bull and started making up songs as they went along.

Their MySpace page still in tact and their current status unknown — which is somehow fitting their laid back, see-what-happens ways — The Obelisk proudly presents this interview with one of New York’s few quality bands. Q&A is, as always, after the jump. Enjoy.

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On their only EP to date, Eibon (Aesthetic Death), the Paris four-piece of the same name craft a brutally sludge-filled sound that runs utterly contradictory to every Francophiliac impression I?ve ever had of their home city. Because they play sludge and because vocalist Georges Balafas is a phlegmy screamer whose voice is well-suited to the lumbering riffs of guitarist Max Hedin, someone is bound to compare them to Eyehategod, but the two tracks included here, ?Asleep and Threatening? and ?Staring at the Abyss,? are far more atmospheric and not nearly as raw-sounding. There?s more happening here than Bower-powered riffs and Southern-fried nihilism.

Each of the two songs is over 10 minutes long, and Eibon gives a credible showing of diversity within the doom/sludge realm. Hedin, bassist St?phane Rivi?re and drummer Jerome Lachaud all used to be in Horrors of the Black Museum, and Balafas? past in Drowning shows through in some of his deeper growls, despite his generally keeping things in a mid-register rasp that comes off like a differently applied version of Darkest Hour?s John Henry?s indecipherability. By that I mean I don?t have a god damn clue what he?s saying, but it sounds like it?s hurting him an awful lot to say it.

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If this is the kind of hateful madness that being in a suckfest band like Five Pointe O inspires, then maybe those one-time Roadrunner Records commerce rock non-priorities served a purpose after all. Bassist Sean Pavey leaves his common denominator past behind him with his new four-piece, Blackbeard, making up for lost time with nasty sludge and sandpaper-grade audio abrasion on the inevitable self-released EP, That’s Why They Call it Dying…, and though I’m not one for ending titles with ellipses, two minutes into opener “Breath of Life/Life’s End” and any and all punctuational grievances are moot. All that’s left is heavy.

You’ll note the part above where it says “sludge.” The thing about that is sludge is, by and large, pretty predictable when it comes to metallic subgenres. It’s usually slow, thick, underproduced and topped off with visceral screams. On that level, these Joliet, Illinois, locals don’t disappoint. That’s Why They Call it Dying… varies the pace of its attack, but the attack is still basically in line with expectation. Doesn’t take away from the immediacy of the songs or the effectiveness of the slowed-down mosh riffs of “Kidney Stoned” or “The Peasant Song,” the latter of which shows a Pantera influence not only in Robert Hughes‘ throat-stinging vocals, but also in the riffs of guitarist John Foster and the alternate time kept by drummer Dan Snodgrass. For his part, Pavey is appropriately rumbling throughout, coming to the surface to introduce a masterful Sleep riff on “The Reckoning” before diving back under the surface of the song to make room for the guitar.

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It’s been said before, and not just by me, that stoner rock is what happens when punk kids grow up. If that case isn’t yet proven, I humbly submit York, PA/Baltimore, MD sludge rockers Swamp Vulture, whose two-song SP (when was the last time you saw those initials for a release?), Hunter-Gatherer has just seen digital release via upstart label, Eleventh Key. The trio of bassist/vocalist Toddst, guitarist Sean and drummer Chris — you know they’re young because they don’t have last names yet — offer densely packed, mid-paced Sleep-style Gretsch and Gibson grooves with some angrier doom flourishes, by and large keeping their sound stripped down and staying away from too much ambiance or atmospheric chicanery.

If Hunter-Gatherer was a DIY cassingle — which, I admit, is how I’ve been thinking of it — side one would be devoted entirely to the title track, which wastes no time with flashy intros, instead starting with the main verse riff and pounding it into the ground. Sean’s tone is not overly fuzzed, but thick nonetheless and Toddst’s bass does much to beef up the Swamp Vulture approach. There are a few pace changes, well done, and a requisite slow, heavy-as-balls part, but “Hunter-Gatherer” mostly shows that if nothing else, these dudes have their influences in line: Sleep, Goatsnake, Melvins.

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While the thought of another Down tour saddens me because it means we’re that much less likely to see a new Crowbar or (gawd forbid) C.O.C. album anytime soon, I’m glad long-running North Carolina dirtball sludgers Weedeater are going to get the exposure of a major corporate tour. Should be pretty funny to see how the dudes in the denim BLS vests react when Dixie Dave starts puking all over the stage. Not to mention what’ll happen if some gets on Danava’s $400 shoes. Yeah, they should fit in just fine. Here’s the PR wire news and the dates:

That is right, sound the alarms: North Carolina’s sludge pillagers Weedeater have been confirmed as support for a full-on North American Down tour! The lineup changes throughout the routing; The Canadian dates feature secondary support from Voivod, while the bulk of the American dates feature The Melvins. Other opening support for the tour will be Danava for the first half and Evil Army for the latter half of the dates.

Weedeater will play several shows in North Carolina and Tennessee on the way to the opening and after the closing of the tour, and will headline sporadically in chunks throughout the main tour. And of course they will do what they do best: sonically reduce every venue they enter to a resin-coated heap of rubble.

Weedeater live:

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Fact: if Sollubi are at war with it, I’m on their side. Even if it’s an intangible concept. I’d advise anyone who didn’t want to get their skull crushed under the force of high-grade disaffected sludge to align his or herself accordingly, because the Pennsylvania/Ohio four-piece belch a 50+ minute, three song hatefest on their full-length debut, At War with Decency (Choking Hazard Records). Stark, drugged and clearly suffering some level of emotional trauma, Sollubi craft songs that, while long, retain their root anger, rather than lose their edge by making some lame attempt at being epic. Combined Eyehategod and Yob? Maybe, if the latter were less cosmic and the former much, much slower.

More than a darkened atmosphere, that on At War with Decency is dirty. Dirty and tired, and the music is an exhausted collapse after some epic relationship-killing argument. Emotionally unfulfilled. Pissed the fuck off. You hear it right away with guitarist Griff’s frantic work on “In Violation,” which opens the record and is both the fastest and shortest track at 4:34. If “sludge” hadn’t been chosen to describe this kind of music, I’d cast my vote for “grime.” It sounds like there’s a film on my speakers, like grease-covered windows.

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Sludgy Richmond newcomers Rube made an immediate impression with their self-released EP Angry at the Missus (reviewed here). With just five tracks, the unhinged four-piece made a definitive debut, popping pills of?Eyehategod and Acid Bath but cutting them with a hunger and drive only possible among the unsigned. One of the glories of this technological golden age we’re living in is that bands of this caliber can afford to make a recording and have it not sound like shit. Guitarist Adam Kravitz, vocalist Ryan Kent, drummer Pat Caine and bassist Big John have done precisely that. The anger carries through, the budget not so much.

Full of Southern aggression and Jim Beam, Rube display an early mastering of a sound it’s taken other bands years to come to grips with and/or tame. As such, I was curious to find out the back story of the band, how they came about and what their plans are going forward. Fortunately, Kravitz and Kent were available to illuminate. Interview is after the jump. Enjoy.

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As promised the other day, I do have a feature on the badass sludginess that is Balboa MI (not to be confused with the other Balboa, on Translation Loss). Unlike every other feature to this point, however, this one’s on video. I filmed this out back of the Northern Lights Lounge in Detroit with drummer Cletus, guitarists RayRay Nelson and Justin Collard, bassist John Cates and vocalist Jarrad Collard. I also have some live footage I might put up as soon as I find a video editing program that doesn’t blow monkey ass.

In the meantime, be sure to check them out on the MySpace, and as always, enjoy.

An album on which everything right down to the artwork reeks of desolation and loneliness, the self-titled debut from Barcelona’s Lords of Bukkake (Odio Sonoro/Gaia Records) is the ideal companion for those evenings when, left to your own devices in a world of infinite possibilities, you choose to sit around in your underwear, drink by yourself and hate at a major league level. Full of visceral anger directed whichever way the speakers are facing, it is slicing and grating, painful, hurtful doom lashing out irredeemable remorse and churning violence. It is the kind of music that makes you feel like there are bugs crawling on you.

Lords of Bukkake opens with its longest track, “Black Lung” — by all accounts an affliction with which bassist/vocalist Toni L?pez is familiar. His biting rasp reminds of Alan Dubin fronting a less minimalist Khanate, while the occasional drawling stoner rock solo from guitarist Jaume L. Pantale?n (also of Cuzo) sets Lords of Bukkake apart from those drone magnates. Still, at 18:47, “Black Lung” is a fierce slab of darkened sludge, chopping up the corpse of a desperate riff and leaving the body up in the Torre de Collserola for the tourists to find.

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High on humidity and sundry mutation-causing chemicals,?Richmond, VA sludge outfit Rube are about as nasty as can be on their self-released debut EP, Angry at the Missus, offering up such sound advice as “Walk it Off” and “Never Trust a Waitress.” A thickly-served single guitar four-piece fronted by the Mike Williams-style nihilistic screaming of Ryan Kent, the band offers five slabs of pissed off riffs and disaffected ideals. They don’t drone, but they take Crowbar’s patented technique of drilling riffs into your skull and modernize it with thorough grooving and a seemingly endless supply of vitriol.

It’s music that wears its bruises proudly — a song like “Well Water” would show you its black eye and proceed to tell you the most violent story you’ve ever heard. Beginning with a creeping bassline and a sample from Silence of the Lambs in which Hannibal Lecter tells Clarice Starling she’s not one generation removed from poor white trash (“you look like a rube,” he says), the song devolves into a Phil Anselmo-type drawl from Kent while guitarist Adam Kravitz pounds the strings like he caught them with their hands on his girlfriend’s leg. The song’s slow procession makes it all the heavier.

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Come to think of it, there were as many bands who were supposed to play Europa in Brooklyn last night who didn’t as there were who did. It’s a three-to-three tie! Outlaw Order, If He Dies He Dies and Pristina were nowhere to be found, but When the Deadbolt Breaks, Negative Reaction and Sourvein picked up the slack, and though we standing in the club held our breath awaiting the arrival of the latter, there was a collective exhale when frontman T-Roy Medlin walked in during Negative Reaction’s set. They’d apparently gotten lost on the way and it had been back and forth as to whether or not they’d make it the whole night.

Driving from the valley to Brooklyn is a daunting task, and not just because of the traffic. With Manhattan between me and that most “Howya doin’?” of boroughs, it’s like climbing a mountain just to get there. When I showed up and saw the room largely empty save for a sampling of the NYC stoner rock faithful, I was glad I’d made the trip. In a town of eight million people and so few heads around, one is not only just as conspicuous by one’s absence as one’s presence, but also it’s just good to show up and support your friends’ bands.

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