Eyehategod - Confederacy Of Ruined Lives
2000 Century Media

Track Listing:
1. Revelation/Revolution
2. Blood Money
3. Jack Ass In The Will Of God
4. Self Medication Blues
5. The Concussion Machine Process
6. Inferior And Full Of Anxiety
7. .0001%
8. 99 Miles Of Bad Road
9. Last Year (She Wanted A Doll House)
10. Corruption Scheme

Line-Up:
Vocals:  Michael Williams
Guitars:  Brian Patton, Jimmy Bower
Bass:  Daniel Nick
Programming:  Joe LaCaze

Website:  www.eyehategod.com

Shev's Rating:  B+
Average Overall Rating:  B+

Shev's Review:
After a long hiatus, Eyehategod had some big shoes to fill with their follow-up to the highly acclaimed "Dopesick".  While this doesn't exactly live up to it's big brother musically, it's still a quality southern-flavored sludge album for fans of the genre and band.

Michael Williams, as always, does a great job with his painfully screamed vocals writhing in dry, scratchy intensity.  With vocals like this on a sludge album of this caliber, you can always bet your bottom dollar that at the very least it's not going to suck.  The guitars and bass also sound obliterating working together and forming a really nice, thick sound without much thought put into chugging as much as writing some cool, moody, pulverizing riffs.

As is typical of Eyehategod, they tend to work as torturously slow as possible, however possibly due to the lack of hardcore drugs it's surprising how much foot-tapping groove they manage to stuff into an album as lethargic as this.  On top of this, the mingling bass contributes by wandering in and out of riffs, all the while holding up the back end.  The overall effect is crushing and a subtly welcome change to their style.

In closing, this certainly isn't the easiest accessible of Eyehategod's releases, but well worth the investment of time just for tracks like "Blood Money", "Self Medication Blues", "The Concussion Machine Process", and "Last Year (She Wanted A Dollhouse)".  There are a few duds, namely ".0001%" which kicks off with almost three minutes of feedback only to be followed by a few more minutes of feedback-structured monotony for a total of 6:22...as well as "99 Miles Of Bad Road" which is obnoxiously repetitious with barely any redeeming value.  Although when making an album like this that's always going to be the case: Hit or miss.  Regardless, even though this isn't up to par with Eyehategod's previous material, especially the previous release, this is still top shelf stuff to be enjoyed by fans with impeccable taste for doom and sludge.

Shev's Rating:  B+