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Rube and the Hell that Follows Men

I love this cover.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.

And here we see the band rocking, as they will. “Junky” and “The Wrench” follow a middle pace into an endless bog of Confederate misery, the rhythm section of bassist Big John and drummer Pat Caine adding viscosity to the already molasses-textured EP. The Rube ethic, at least as it appears on Angry at the Missus, is to be as heavy as possible at all times with little thought to extras or throwing in radical changes. There are unquestionable benefits to the approach, as the unrelenting thud of the aforementioned “Never Trust a Waitress” attests, and on the whole, the EP is soundly executed and Rube show themselves to be contenders among the next generation of riff merchants to come out of the RVA scene.

Play sludge and sooner or later someone’s going to compare you to Eyehategod. It’s just a fact of life, and Angry at the Missus does show that Rube have picked up a lesson or two from the Nola grandmasters, but they belong to a new league of boozy fist-throwers who are just getting started. Once these guys establish themselves, they could be really dangerous.

Rube on MySpace

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4 Responses to “Rube and the Hell that Follows Men”

  1. oliver caine says:

    GET READY, RUBE is THE new name in AMERICAN SLUDGE METAL!!!

    It doesn’t get any heavier than this!!!!!!!!!

  2. oliver caine says:

    RUBE HAS SONGS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM, ITUNES, NAPSTER, AND RHAPSODY!!!!

    NORTHEAST TOUR COMING THIS SUMMER!!!

  3. Dolt says:

    A stunning review; unfortunately, Rube will never live up to it. In their home-town of RVA (as the review so strongly emphasized), the band is considered a living punchline. Rube is a great up and coming band – in their eyes only. At best, the reviewer is sucking the massive cock of Richmond, Virginia’s music scene.

    At Rube’s best, they are a harmless group of barbeque enthused drunken rednecks who never shut the fuck up about grilling and bullshit riffs. At their worst, the band’s misogynistic tendencies and outright terrible playing, writing, and overblown egos make them the a generic bunch of flunkies; embarassing to the hard-working talent in Richmond.

    A review like this spits in the face of the modest, talented bands of the east coast.

  4. interested says:

    funny how a good review brings out the sad internet fags who are jealous of others ..

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