Band:	Eyehategod
Album:	A History Of Nomadic Behavior
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	March 12, 2021
A review by:	X-Ray Rod

01. Built Beneath The Lies
02. The Outer Banks
03. Fake What's Yours
04. Three Black Eyes
05. Current Situation
06. High Risk Trigger
07. Anemic Robotic
08. The Day Felt Wrong
09. The Trial Of Johnny Cancer
10. Smoker's Piece
11. Circle Of Nerves
12. Every Thing, Every Day

Well, we waited quite some time. While seven years, it's half the time we previously waited for their self-titled comeback album; I feel like A History Of Nomadic Behavior is half the album we could have gotten from these sludge legends.

You'd be hard-pressed to find another staff member at Metal Storm headquarters that is as much of a rabid Eyehategod fan as I am. Their classic albums are permanently attached to my younger years as a metalhead and still greatly resonate with me. I'm obviously beyond stoked that Mike IX Williams is back after some pretty serious health issues, culminating in a liver transplant. His grunts and anguished "hobo yelling" still carry a punch as he delivers all his lines of decadent and bitter poetry flawlessly and with conviction. The pass of time has not slowed him down at all.

It's the music that has slowed down instead. The majority of the album puts more emphasis on the slow, bluesy tones filled with misery and gloom, rather than the anger and nastiness of their more fast-paced moments. I don't want to say they sound tired, but they certainly are less violent and carry their sound more towards the blues/doom side of the sludge equation instead of the hardcore one. The production aids these bluesy riffs, making them very loud and potent, but unfortunately the sound is a bit too clean, leaving them almost clinically calculated and somewhat predictable. A harsher, noisier sound akin to the one on the first 4 albums would have helped this album a lot in order to get proper bite and rawness. The faster sections on A History Of Nomadic Behavior are few and far between, which is a shame for those who craved an injection of aggression.

Individually, most of the songs are good-to-great, but being 40 minutes long, I feel this album is in need of fat-trimming due to the lack of variation from track to track. There are some truly nice pieces though. The opening track "Built Beneath The Lies" and "Three Black Eyes" perfectly fuse the bluesy riffs to the more pummeling, merciless ones. A slow moment that truly caught me off guard was "Smoker's Piece", which is an instrumental. It's a really interesting interlude with a sound the band could have capitalized on to give more identity to the album. It's hazy, fun, mysterious, and even psychedelic at points. A lot was done in barely a minute. The closer "Every Thing, Every Day", with its intense build up and vocal delivery, also serves as a testament that Eyehategod clearly know how to keep slow-paced sludge tracks interesting. It's just a shame they couldn't extend that into a whole album this time around. One thing is for sure though: I'm still going to be first in line to catch these Louisiana maniacs live, as I'm sure most of these songs will shine properly through a harsher live setting.