There are a lot of bands – enough to fill that moon-sized sinkhole in Siberia, at a conservative estimate – who try to rip off Eyehategod by essentially rehashing their riffs and pretending they have a drug habit, completely ignoring the fact that what made albums like Dopesick so threatening was the fact that NOLA’s finest sounded like they did because they lived it. No copycat bullshit; they sounded deranged because they mostly were.
Hailing from the isolated depths of The Black Country, rotten sludge sextet Opium Lord are one of the few who understand that translating self-loathing, paranoia and drug abuse into mangled dirges of sludge is about more than just aping Jimmy Bower’s riffs – it’s about fucking living it and being true to yourselves as an individual band.
And, for the most part, Eye Of Earth is the zenith of that. From the chaotic slop of narcotic grooves that make up opener Challenger to the crawling, anguished hell of closer Krocodil, it might not be perfect, but that’s not the point./o:p
