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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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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