EyehategodIt's taken nearly two and a half decades for New Orleans' Eyehategod to make it to Australia… And nobody really seems to care. There's not much of a crowd in The Zoo tonight as hardcore/power-violence crew Shackles blast through a blink-and-you'd-miss-it set.
Not many more people arrive as The Fevered do their thing. One of the local scene's bright lights, these guys have developed an incendiary live set out of their noisy metal-influenced hardcore.
Then, with the thick, dank air lending The Zoo the humidity of a Louisiana swamp, sludge survivors Eyehategod take to the stage. Vocalist Mike IX Williams takes the microphone to ask the crowd, “Where are your neighbours man? We've never played here before and there's like 50 people here.” Then the band stands there, not playing, talking amongst each other for a moment. In these moments it becomes apparent that age hasn't tempered or calmed these dudes down one bit. They seem genuinely wild and at least a bit legitimately dangerous when they decide to eventually launch into their set; guitarist Brian Patton keeps flicking lit cigarettes into the crowd and when a fan responds to Williams asking how the band is sounding with 'good enough', he jibes, “Good enough? Show this guy the door. He's not good enough.”
This abuse and confusion is the perfect accompaniment to the band's down-tuned, distortion-riddled hardcore and when the five-piece can stop talking shit long enough to play a tune, numbers like Sisterfucker and Lack Of Almost Everything hit the crowd like a gut shot. Patton and fellow guitarist Jimmy Bower play their instruments like basses, riding out squalls of feedback to produce a thunderous groove. The back catalogue cuts never falter, the band veer from the molasses jams like Blank and Run It Into The Ground to the crazed gallop of Methamphetamine and each new effort comes across like a powerful statement of intent.
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When Eyehategod introduce the crowd to numbers like Medicine Noose from their long-gestating and yet-to-be-released fifth full-length they are similarly successful; the Patton/Bower riff interplay is unfailingly dense, the Joe LaCaze/Gary Mader rhythm section feels impenetrable. It feels like anything these guys try their hand at tonight will be a winner.
Because on the other side of town a stadium full of people are swooning over the beige rock stylings of a band that makes elevator music sound dangerous in comparison, Eyehategod's presence on The Zoo stage tonight feels all the more important. They are an exercise in tar-black rock'n'roll nihilism; gritty, visceral and not always comfortable. But their set tonight is fucking fantastic because of all of that.
