EyeHateGod
In the Name of Suffering

"In The Name Of Suffering" was recorded at Festival Studios in Kenner, a shithole near LA, for just 1,000 dollars. To be honest (and sometimes it's so difficult...) 200 dollars were spent on booze, and 800 ended up in the pockets of the studio guys, one of whom had just overdosed.
We had no idea what to do in a "real" studio. So we just followed our instincts.
The sound of the album ended up being raw and entirely uncompromising. Even ahead of its time, for its primordial aggression.
It was our first release for a French label called "Intellectual Convulsion," which, for all we know, printed 1500-2000 copies, gave 5 to each of us, and disappeared into the streets of Paris.
Century Media offered to reissue the album and send us on tour around Europe. So we signed on the dotted line with blood and whiskey (pretty strong, huh?!?).
So listen to this album, shed a tear in your glass, and pop a bottle for old times’ sake" (Mike Williams, notes on the 2007 reissue of "In The Name Of Suffering")

Sludge understood as rust, cancer that infects the heavy metal loved by young and old, until it becomes sick, agonizing.
Slow, slack-jawed doom. Frenzied and desperate hardcore outbursts. Defaced, deformed southern blues.
Like attempting an impossible escape in the middle of a swamp, with flies and mosquitoes sticking to you, dragging on an injured leg, chased by a maniac armed with shears.

Tony Iommi, set running on a treadmill with his balls hooked up to 220 volts until his mustache trembles...

King Buzzo, shaved bald and forced to wear Sunday patent leather shoes...

Greg Ginn, nailed hand and foot to a chair, connected to a drip of blonde non-alcoholic...

The feedback that opens and closes every song: pins sticking behind your eyes, the creaking of the door of a torture chamber...

"In The Name Of Suffering" ('92) is above all Mike Williams, evangelist of a bad novella, ambassador of a universal message of self-harm, marginalization, poverty, synthetic trips gone wrong, horrors hidden in the basement or the closet where overalls are kept.
It is especially his (non)voice, his (non)singing, that tells of self-inflicted wounds in the solitude of a room, of pools of stagnant water, of violence and abuse carried out within the walls of a shack. Of damp cellars, of musty smells. Of blades of light making their way through boards of moldy wood.

An even more ungainly, more imperfect, more rotten album compared to later masterpieces.
And, perhaps, precisely for this reason, even better.

Sludge in its most infected form.
Sludge in its purest form.