Dopesick

Eyehategod’s third album is one of the most downbeat, negative-attitude records ever made by anyone. Just look at the song titles: “Non Conductive Negative Reasoning,” “Lack Of Almost Everything,” “Zero Nowhere,” “Broken Down But Not Locked Up,” and of course the classic opener, “My Name Is God (I Hate You).” Musically, it’s in the same vein as its predecessor, 1993’s Take As Needed For Pain, but even noisier and cruder: the between-song tape collages have been eliminated, and the mix is muddier. Every once in a while, they interrupt the swampy, Black Sabbath-esque tempos for hardcore punk-style blasting (“Lack…”, “My Name Is…”, and, unsurprisingly, “Methamphetamine”), but for the most part this is a slow-motion head-nod of an album, ugly and mean.