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Album Review: Eyehategod, A History of Nomadic Behavior

Posted in Reviews on March 17th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

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.

Eyehategod, “High Risk Trigger” visualizer

A History of Nomadic Behavior lnk.to

Eyehategod website

Eyehategod on Thee Facebooks

Eyehategod on Instagram

Century Media website

Century Media on Thee Facebooks

Century Media webstore

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EyeHateGod to Release A History of Nomadic Behavior in Spring 2021

Posted in Whathaveyou on November 17th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

New Orleans sludge institution EyeHateGod will release their first album in seven years, A History of Nomadic Behavior, in Spring 2021. They’ve re-signed with Century Media for the new offering, which will be the follow-up to their 2014 self-titled, a record for which they’ve consistently toured since its release. Actually, they were kind of on tour before they released it too. Pretty much since they started up again, they’ve been touring. You might say: they have a long track record of moving around from place to place.

There has to be some better way to phrase that.

I’ll confess I never really checked out the self-titled, because the rest of the universe was slathering it with hyperbole anyway and at that point why bother, plus I kind of found it easier to live without than I expected. I don’t know if I’m even cool enough to get to hear this one — the answer to that question more often than not is “no” — but A History of Nomadic Behavior is due out in Spring just the same, and it’s the joy of my day to get to post a quote from Mike Gitter, whom I remember fondly from his days at Roadrunner Records in NYC.

From the PR wire:

eyehategod a history of nomadic behavior

EYEHATEGOD RETURN TO CENTURY MEDIA RECORDS

NEW ALBUM, A HISTORY OF NOMADIC BEHAVIOR, ARRIVES SPRING 2021 (DATE TBA)

EyeHateGod have returned to Century Media Records, with an eye towards a Spring 2021 release for the band’s first album in seven years: A History of Nomadic Behavior (date TBA).

A joint statement from the band on the band and label reunion: “EyeHateGod are pleased to announce we’ve signed a licensing deal with Century Media Records USA and Europe…! We welcome the new changes along with the new year coming, and want this union to benefit everyone involved, especially our rabid and disturbed fans across the globe!”

“We’re happy to announce solidifying our worldwide relationship with EyeHateGod,” added Director of Century Media Records, Phillipp Schulte. “While Century Media has worked with the guys in the past, we’re excited to begin a new chapter with a record that easily ranks amongst this hard-working, heavy-touring band’s best. We are very much looking forward to releasing EyeHateGod’s A Historic of Nomadic Behavior.”

“EyeHateGod are survivors on every level,” says Century Media Records Vice President of A&R, Mike Gitter. “Since 1988 they’ve been part of the framework of extreme music and A History of Nomadic Behavior will be no exception. Theirs is a tough and turbulent road that would have stopped most bands dead in their tracks. Not these NOLA legends. Century Media has been part of their career from the early days and we’re excited to be working together again. EyeHateGod is here to stay.”

The cover art for A History of Nomadic Behavior has been revealed as the band and label prepare to share additional details about the album in coming weeks.

http://www.eyehategod.ee
http://www.facebook.com/OfficialEyeHateGod
https://www.instagram.com/eyehategodnola
http://www.centurymedia.com
http://www.facebook.com/centurymedia
http://www.cmdistro.com

EyeHateGod, “Medicine Noose” official video

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