Eyehategod
Dopesick

Eyehategod, a band with an undeniably provocative moniker, hails from the deep South of the United States and plays a genre that can be classified as Post Hardcore as well as Sludge (an agonizingly slow Hardcore punk).

The band has been active for more than fifteen years now and it can be said that they were the first to ignite the phenomenon of Post Hardcore, a genre that directly descends from the most violent and extreme Punk but instead of dealing with political themes, it addresses the inner turmoil of humans. I can't name any reference bands because they were exactly the inventors of a certain type of sound, later picked up by many other bands in the second half of the '90s.

“Dopesick,” although not one of the first works by this quartet (indeed, it dates back to 1996), stands at the top of the category for expressiveness and, above all, for the influences it has generated. The album in question is technically quite simple, with chords and riffs that are rather easy to execute yet undeniably impactful: even the drumming falls into medium-easy tempos, and only rarely does it unleash into typically Punk rhythmic outbursts. Most of the album is very slow and cadenced (which is why it can be defined as Sludge), actually, the slowdowns are greatly extended to convey the idea of that relentless generational struggle. The singing is something absolutely degrading; the voice, shouted but far from being a screaming or growling (in full Hardcore Punk tradition, in other words), is coarse, dirty, rabidly resigned to a condition from which it cannot escape. You cannot think of a voice more suitable for the lyrics of Eyehategod, a concentration of pure nihilism, distrust, and self-loathing towards life and men: and then the desire for death, the squalor of inner peace achieved only through drugs.

The twelve songs are all well-structured but not excessively so, in line with the mood expressed. But the cornerstone of “Dopesick” and of this group’s entire production is the mood: thanks also to a Garage Band production, every song reproduces the days of a suburban youth doomed to ruin, a life wasted and spent in the worst ways. The scorching and crushing riffing, the raspy voice, and the very simplicity of the music played, outline a reality of misfits, marginalized by a society that is not really a better alternative. To be fair, not all the episodes of this CD are successful; the less slow tracks end up constituting the weakest section with excessive references to Punk: the more successful ones are those that are more distinctly Sludge, where the quintet manages to unleash their most intimately corrupted side.

What is also appreciable (though alarming) about this ensemble is that the sentiments expressed in their compositions are the ones that characterize their lives and hence are not just a facade intended for the music market. The social trash and human wrecks materialize in the songs of this album, epochal, seminal, and emotionally desolating.