EYEHATEGOD / 4AD

Time to bring absolute living legends to our stage again. EYEHATEGOD has been the epitome of Southern sludge metal since 1988 and is coming all the way to the most damned corner of the country: Diksmuide! Debut album ‘In the Name of Suffering’ from 1990 lived up to the promise of its title with tormented vocals, sluggish power chords, misanthropic lyrics, and dragging sludge riffs that unfold into explosions of hardcore punk speed. EYEHATEGOD quickly emerged as one of the key figures of the NOLA scene, a position they further anchored with their second album ‘Take as Needed for Pain’ (1993), a feast of misery, drenched in deep sludge. That line is continued on ‘Dopesick’ (1996), which balances between long, suffocating doom songs and shorter, punk-drenched tracks, with Mike Williams’s voice as a connecting element — driven by a life full of brutal bad luck and even more disastrous choices. Undeniably one of the core records within the sludge genre and mandatory listening for enthusiasts. Their most recent record ‘A History of Nomadic Behaviour’ (2021) came from the three-year tour they started in 2017 and the two-year pandemic full of political turmoil and endless hypocrisy. The result is a combination of blues-drenched and gasoline-soaked distorted sounds, consisting of largely mid-tempo songs, pierced with harrowing pain and distraught anger. In 2026, they are hitting the road again, with Mike IX Williams on vocals, Jimmy Bower on guitar, Gary Mader on bass, and Aaron Hill on drums. An essential band to cross off your ‘have I ever seen live’ bingo card!