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Album Review: Eyehategod, A History of Nomadic Behavior

eyehategod a history of nomadic behavior

If there’s one thing Eyehategod aren’t short on, it’s history. Though just their sixth full-length in a career that goes back more than 30 years, the New Orleans sludge forebears represent a style of volatility that more than two generations of bands have sought in one way or another to emulate, and almost no one has come close to their chaotic, held-together-by-a-thread spirit. A History of Nomadic Behavior is their first outing for Century Media since 2000’s Confederacy of Ruined Lives and is separated from that record — in terms of studio LPs, at least — only by 2014’s self-titled, a “return” offering through Housecore Records that followed years of touring resurgence and legend-building.

There is almost nothing one might reasonably ask of A History of Nomadic Behavior that it doesn’t deliver. Certainly, the band — who also stylize the name as EyeHateGod — have seen several changes over the last 10 years, with the 2013 death of drummer Joe LaCaze and the departure of guitarist Brian Patton, who had been with Eyehategod since 1989 and 1993, respectively. Founding guitarist Jimmy Bower (also The Mystick Krewe of Clearlight and drums for Down) and vocalist Mike IX Williams are well intact, and along with longtime bassist Gary Mader and drummer Aaron HillEyehategod present their stage-honed antipathy across 12 tracks and 42 minutes of the willfully destructive riff-punk that became sludge largely in their (and Crowbar‘s, to be fair) wake, because to call it anything else was and is simply inappropriate.

Inevitably, A History of Nomadic Behavior will be some listener’s first Eyehategod record. For as long as the band is tenured and as much of their audience might have aged along with them, their regular touring over the last 15 or so years has ensured that subsequent generations of listeners are likely to take them on, and while their early work in 1990’s In the Name of Suffering and the essential 1993 follow-up, Take as Needed for Pain, remain staples of the genre canon, it’s just not where everyone is going to start.

So what of the album as an introduction to the band? Williams is a poet, and, yes, he knows it. His vocals — recorded by esteemed producer and his Corrections House bandmate Sanford Parker — are arguably the rawest element on display throughout songs like “Fate What’s Yours,” “High Risk Trigger” and the closing “Every Thing, Every Day,” and his lyrics are spit through in guttural, vocal-cord-straining fashion, and by now it’s hard to think of him doing anything else except for the periodic drawl that complements, as in “Current Situation.” It’s easy to imagine his approach as a physical sensation; guttural in the truest sense in being from the gut. His disaffection, accompanied by a long and chronicled past of addiction, is nothing less than a hallmark of Eyehategod‘s work, and that’s true from the moment he arrives following the initial feedback of opener “Built Beneath the Lies” to the last shouts of “Kill your boss!” before “Every Thing, Every Day” cuts to noise and a final manipulated sample about being scared to go to sleep.

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The narrative around A History of Nomadic Behavior — beyond the simple ‘there’s a new Eyehategod record and this is it’ — is that it finds Williams as a lyricist engaging with sociopolitical issues in a new way. Fair enough, but one would by no means call these songs, even “Current Situation,” political. “Circle of Nerves” strikes as a fitting summary of the anxiety of the last year of pandemic and social division, and “High Risk Trigger” takes a somewhat similar perspective in waiting for the shoe to drop, whatever shoe that might be and whatever its dropping might bring, but the lyrics are impressions and the delivery is harsh, and if you find you’re turned off by Williams feeling ‘ways about stuff,’ as Futurama once put it, my simple advice is to get over yourself.

For accompaniment, Bower‘s riffs are no less integral to Eyehategod being Eyehategod, and he wields feedback with the hand of a master. Noise is a crucial factor throughout A History of Nomadic Behavior, whether it’s serving as an intro as on “Current Situation” — how could it not? — or offsetting the start-stop chug of presumed side B opener “Anemic Robotic.” Fast or slow, punked or stoned, the guitar captures the sense of sway and crash that makes up so much of the band’s rhythm — and of course Mader and Hill have their roles in that too — and as recorded by James Whitten (who also mixed and mastered, with Parker having a hand in the mix as well), the guitar, bass and drums come through balancing thickness and grit, clarity and rawness as if to preserve the latter without sacrificing the former. It’s a tough niche to find, sound-wise, but listening to “The Trial of Johnny Cancer” — which introduces the paranoid sample that “Every Thing, Every Day” concludes — there’s still plenty of dirt in Bower‘s tone as Williams declares, “I’d rather be a corpse than a coward.”

The simple truth of A History of Nomadic Behavior is that the stakes aren’t that high for Eyehategod in putting out a new release, and nothing I say about it is going to matter in the slightest. They’re a live band, and they’ve worked hard to earn that reputation. New album or not, they were going to tour, and it doesn’t seem likely that A History of Nomadic Behavior is going to usurp their ’90s-era records as the foundation of their legacy. They steamroll through this collection of songs as they steamroll through everything. They know their audience — new or old — and there’s even a “Smoker’s Place” tucked late into the tracklisting to give a breather before “Circle of Nerves” and “Every Thing, Every Day,” reminiscent of Down‘s “Doobinterlude.”

Three-plus decades later, Eyehategod have kicked their way through every last expectation of their demise and stood the test of time. Their output is pivotal sludge, and though they’re not by any means prolific in terms of LPs, they know how to harness their signature ferocity in a studio setting when it comes right to it. Maybe the highest compliment one could pay A History of Nomadic Behavior is to say it sounds like Eyehategod. There was no way it would’ve come out otherwise.

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One Response to “Album Review: Eyehategod, A History of Nomadic Behavior

  1. Mike H says:

    I (still) ALWAYS hover over images to read your tags. 10+ years now. I just enjoy it…and today my efforts have paid off. I LOVE IT!! Thank you. The cover does indeed kick ass. I started to read it on a zoom (work) call (a no-no), read the tag and laughed out loud. People are wondering about me now. Anyway, you nailed it saying they are a live band and this album sounds like them. The tones of all of the instruments and Mike’s vocals are precisely as they are live these days (example: https://youtu.be/fKKcBdA_Jjg). My only gripe, and it’s minimal, is Mader’s bass. Sonically he sets his amp to remove almost all of the mid and high frequencies. Live the pay off in that is you can feel his bass lines rumbling in your gut. It just doesn’t carry over on the studio recording, unless you are listening through a stereo at inhuman levels. I wish I could “hear” it more, but that’s it. I am in love with the album. No surprise there I am sure. Speaking of Mader, he put the cover together. I actually feel a connection to some of William’s lyrics this time too, so that only enhances the experience. Cannot wait to see them play these songs live.

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