#exhorder

Exhorder - Slaughter In The Vatican - 1990

eyehategod: Take as Needed for Pain (1993)

The vinyl may still be clear, but we're taking a dark, DARK turn today on VinylSpinning: from the blissful Americana of Kacey Musgraves to the tormented sludge metal of eyehategod (*), and specifically their haunting sophomore full-length, Take as Needed for Pain ...

If America's tragic, ongoing opioid crisis needed a soundtrack, it could be this monument to suffering, despair, self-loathing, and misanthropy, which creeped in like a nightmare some 30 years ago (this reissue dates to 2015).

It's a nightmare that started (as legend has it, and yes, it's probably apocryphal) April 20, 1988, a.k.a. Cannabis Culture Day, when guitarist Jimmy Bower and drummer Joey LaCaze came together in New Orleans and joined the Big Easy's coalescing sludge scene.

After recruiting singer Mike Williams, the provocatively named eyehategod recorded two demos, '89's Garden Dwarf Woman Driver (huh?) and '90's Lack of Almost Everything, which drew the attention of French independent Convulsion Records.

Granted the princely recording budget (NOT!) of $1,000, eyehategod captured their debut album, In the Name of Suffering, later that year, and when Convulsion went bankrupt, German metal label Century Media stepped in and reissued the disc in late '92.

This time, enough copies were printed to spark an underground buzz, but the band (now also featuring lead guitarist Brian Patton and bassist Mark Schultz) were still living hand-to-mouth when they started work on Take as Needed for Pain at New Orleans' Studio 13.

In fact, Williams was allegedly homeless!

Sure sounds like it, and the album's much improved production did little to soften the sonic and psychic blows (that was never the intention) still raining down from seminal southern sludge templates like "Blank," "30$ Bag," and title track.

With their diabolical doom, head-nodding groove metal, even hardcore sprints, these tunes arrived coated in grime, feedback, and distortion, while Williams burst a spleen spewing harrowing lyrics about poverty, crime, addiction, and pain ... so much pain.

Some songs I don't even dare mention by name, for fear that their titular references to racism, incest, and abuse will offend humans and internet bots alike (the cover art may trip those alarm bells anyway), even if their lyrics clarify the band's position in opposition to these contemptible human sins.

Other cuts camouflage their horrors behind seemingly innocuous titles (see "Who Gave Her the Roses" and, erm, "Kill Your Boss"), and unnerving spoken-word collages like "Disturbance" and "Laugh it Off" also contributed to the definitive southern sludge aesthetic.

In sum, it's safe to say that with Take as Needed for Pain, eyehategod both found their way and showed the way for many fellow sludge-mongers, and 1996's equally classic Dopesick consolidated their influence before personal issues set in.

The band has been in and out of career (and sometimes personal) rehab for the past quarter century, and LaCaze sadly passed ten years ago, but albums like Take as Needed for Pain will remain vital and relevant so long as humanity's evil prevails over good.

Which is to say, for all eternity.

* Look at me overcoming my grammatical O.C.D. by adopting the band's chosen (I think?) lower-case spelling, instead of going with Eyehategod, EYEHATEGOD, or today's more common stylized approach, EyeHateGod.