Now into their twenty-third year as a band, veteran sludge metal outfit EYEHATEGOD have just released a 90+ live DVD which contains two complete live shows along with an assortment of bonus tracks. Both shows feature well-recorded, multi-camera footage that capture EYEHATEGOD in all their miscreant glory.

The first show was recorded on the band's 2010 tour at the "scum owned and operated" venue Now That's Class in Cleveland. The band plays a lumbering fourteen song set which includes "Dixie Whiskey", "White N*gger" and the set closer "Methamphetamine". This show was obviously filmed by someone well familiar with the band's music as the camera angles range from on-stage close-ups to B&W cut-aways and capture both the energy of the band and the fist-pumping, ravenous fans who have packed the front of the stage. Below is a live video from the DVD for the song "Jackass in the Will of God" (from the album Kerrang).



The band wrote about this show in a tour diary (posted on decibelmagazine.com): "Openers are the Atlas Moth, Keelhaul, and Strong Intention. Keelhaul played in the basement of the club, unleashing an assault of heavy, yet intricate riffing that we couldn’t begin to figure out. Anytime we play in Cleveland, we play with them; they are like extended family. Tonight’s crowd is a turbulent ocean of flying bodies and the usual blood and broken stuff. A huge skinhead that nobody wants to fuck with and who we guarantee has never heard of us before keeps getting on stage, gets pushed off, gets back up, and is taking up way too much space on a stage with only barely enough room for five. He decides he’s gonna lay down in Mike’s zone. Bad move. At first none of us knew what to do with this dude, then Mike starts spitting all over him while he was laying on stage, which then escalated to the guy catching the iron base of the mic stand in the back of the neck. He finally got off of the stage. All in all, a great night, all captured on five camera angles by our friends at Digital Live. The night ends with the fucking bonehead getting in a fight (surprise surprise!) with some guy, then a bouncer, and then the owner of the club. Wild."

The second show was recorded at the Otto Bar in Baltimore on 10/23/09 and this show's eleven tracks has no overlap with the Cleveland show. Highlights from this show are "$30 Bag", "Kill Your Boss" and "Serving Time in the Middle of Nowhere". Mike IX Williams interacts a bit more with the audience at this show with some crowd baiting ("If you're gonna throw shit at us at least throw money. Quarters are fine.") and calls for "heroin and black girls". This too is a solid show - it appears to have been filmed from the house cameras which gives it a bit more gloss with some of the "above the crowd" camera angles. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find any videos from the DVD posted online for this show so I've included an audience video from the show for the song "Kill Your Boss".)



There are six bonus tracks which include three songs filmed live in Vienna, Austria in 2010 ("Shoplift", "Run It To The Ground" and "Shinobi") and three videos ("Sister Fucker" and the disturbing promo videos for "Anxiety Hangover" and "Age of Bootcamp").



In an interview with the website Global Domination, Mike Williams described EYEHATEGOD's music as "Punk Rock Sabbath. Southern Rock Black Flag. Hardcore Blues. Heroin Metal...Besides music we’re all influenced by shitty jobs, crap record labels, cheap speed, cheaper LSD, bus fumes, sidewalks, old people, long van rides and hospitals."

While musical trends come and go and numerous bands change their sound over time, I have no doubt that EYEHATEGOD will continue to pump out self-loathing Southern sludge for years to come. Both fans of EYEHATEGOD and bands like Down and The Melvins are going to want to pick this release.

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EYEHATEGOD