The best thing about metal is that when push really comes to shove, there is always gonna be someone out there who isn’t gonna be fooled by any bullshit. Integrity of vision will always be championed over trends of the moment (however cool they might be in certain ways) if you are genuinely dedicated to metal as a “lifestyle” and not just an “interest.” It doesn’t even matter if the lifestyles of the bands in question are different, as long as the motivation for the music is an attempt to speak an honest truth or paint a real picture. Whether Shai Hulud’s impassioned and complicated classical true metalcore deeply philosophical straight edge anthems, NYC’s The Resurrection Sorrow’s riff reveling horror dalliance, a relatively lesser known band like Komondor’s stark wall of noisy agonies or the legendary New Orleans sludge pioneering Eyehategod’s unhinged waves of whiskey drenched misanthropy, the proof is in the fucking recipe for the pudding.
The subjects of our interview today, Eyehategod may have had some times when they were wild and fucked up as hell but at least they were honest about it and thus the band and music was a true depiction and not a false projected image. You can’t fake a song like “My Name Is God (I Hate You)” or “Serving Time In The Middle Of Nowhere.” This aint some pretty picture that is gonna moonlight conveniently on a video game or hip movie soundtrack unless the material it is (hypothetically) paired with is equally nightmarish .

That said, Eyehategod are stronger than ever these days, even amidst the a.d.d. modern moment of new bands popping up and dying every month. There is something awe inspiring about a band like EHG who, through sheer talent and stubbornness, can still hack and slash their peers to bits and hold strong to their niche and stay relevant year after year through willpower and never losing sight of what the band is about. This band might very well be the most negative bunch of bastards ever to have such a positive effect on the true underground. Combine music that is like a guided tour of hell with artwork and cut up mental imagery that is downright Burroughsian, and you are getting the picture. EHG are an experience more than just a band. With a rabidly anticipated well overdue new album finally in the works, Crusher had to talk with veteran lifer drummer Joey LaCaze and discuss all things EHG. Death to pigs.

MORGAN Y. EVANS: Let’s talk about your December tour. I saw Zoroaster is on some of your upcoming dates. I just saw them recently with Nachtmystium and it was bad ass.

JOEY LACAZE: Yeah, we’re gonna have fun. We did some shows with Nachtmystium too on the last little run we did. It’s gonna be awesome, man. I can’t wait. I aint doin’ shit, man. I’m ready to get the fuck out there! (laughing)

MYE: You getting’ stir crazy?

JL: Yeah, just sittin’ at home. Well…it’s like love and hate. I like going out on tour but you gotta be away from your family. I got a little one and everything. I like playing and everything…

MYE: But you have the rest of your life as well to deal with.

JL: Yeah.

MYE: When you try and readjust to your normal life after being on the road and playing such aggressive music, after a tour or party regimen how long does it take you to recover or bounce back into the “normal” world?

JL: To be honest with you, dude…we’ve been doing this for so long together, it’s like old hat. We’ve been through everything together. The best situations and the worst. Aint nothin’ I aint been through with these dudes that I don’t know how one of them will react. We’ve always remained in close quarters. We tour all the time but have never really been on a big tour bus or that type of stuff. We try to make what we can when we go out. We’re just a small band and are fortunate enough to do what we do. Usually the first week of the tour you are really apprehensive about leaving. It sucks getting all your shit together before you leave. Then you take off and it’s fun and a blast the first week. Second week you’re really in the groove. Third week you start to get tired (laughing). You start feeling burnt out a little bit every night. By the fourth week you’re ready to come back home. You’ve been away long enough that you’re ready to readjust and…do nothing (laughing). But really, we’re all a little older now. We still have fun but we aint doing as much of the crazy shit we used to do (laughing). We aint trying to have some of the situations that have happened in the fast.

MYE: You already lived them once.

JL: Yeah. I’m so grateful just to be in a band like this. Especially being from New Orleans, you could walk down the street and there’s people that are on the street playing music that’ll just blow you away. Great musicians that never leave the city or go anywhere. We go to Europe. We go to Japan. We get to do all this shit and I’m so fortunate that I am part of this and we have our corner of the music world. Nowadays, it seems to be turning out to be such a good thing and we’re finally reaping the benefits of all the years of struggling. To be honest, we don’t make no money with this band. We’ve been doing it all these years out of love. It’s finally taking off to where we can come back home and it’s worth our while. We’re not leaving broke and coming home broke. I love it. I see all these kids and I’m so grateful that these kids are into us. When I was at that age I was the same way and was so hyped to see the band I was into. These kids could not care about us at all! At one point at the end of the nineties it almost felt like “who knew” where heavy music was even going. Y’know, now I feel like it’s made such a comeback in a way. I like to find out the roots of shit and the underground place where it started. It’s a good sign that there are kids 15 years younger than me and that’s what they are looking for. They are looking for legitimate stuff.

MYE: There have been some good bands and there are fans that care but we also know there is often a lot of horrible pussy ass shit in music that comes out. There is tons of bad music but your band holds up. You’ve crystallized the sludge and blues and even hardcore influences in there and even though you’ve been around, for some people who haven’t heard you it still has the ability to shock people. They are like, “Wow”. It feels much more real than what people get crammed down their throats.

JL:: The live shows are really where we shine. I’ll be honest with you, the live shows…the chemistry that’s going on is a whole different thing and I don’t think we’ve ever captured that on a record. TAKE AS NEEDED FOR PAIN was when we were probably at our rawest and just living that way at the time. We kind of captured that on that record. I don’t think we’ve ever really put out a record that captures what we do live. The feeling is magical, just feeling it on stage. It’s fuckin’ awesome. We aren’t talking to each other but we communicate.

MYE: You can see it on live videos of you on Youtube where you just look at each other and are one fucking animal, you know?

JL: That’s a good way of putting it, man. You just get this wave of emotion and it’s like, "Yeaaah, dude!" (laughing) That’s what it’s about. We’ve got a lot of stuff written for the new record to come out and all, but…I don’t even know if this is a good way of puttin’ it, but I’d really love to take it back to like, just the blues. Fuckin’ John Lee Hooker. I wanna take the style we’ve had for all these years of learning how to play together…I feel like we should reinvent the blues again. Led Zeppelin did it and all that shit. I feel like we should do it in the punk sense. Not that we don’t do that now, but I feel like this record that’s what I’d really like to do. That’s why I think we aren’t gonna put this thing out until…we’ve got a lot of great stuff and we’re ready but I think it’s gonna take the right recording and right atmosphere to do that.

MYE: I am a huge fan of CONFEDERACY OF RUINED LIVES you’ve done a few things since then but that was the last main album release…quite awhile ago. This is so anticipated. I’m sure it won’t suck anyway, but I know you want it to come off the way you envision.

JL: This will be an important record for us. We haven’t put anything out, man, in several years now. We could come out with something that’s the same old shit, or do we wanna do something different? At the same time, I don’t want it to be so different that it’s not Eyehategod. I’m trying to find the chemistry of keeping it the same format but having it be something a little newer sounding. I don’t know how to quite do that. We have some songs now that are like that and they’re awesome. We’ll be working in a room on songs for fucking hours and a few weeks later you kind of second guess yourself and are like ,” Is this song even that fucking cool?” (laughing). All of a sudden in five minutes after that you come up with something that is truly fucking great. Then you feel like…fuck! Then you wanna rewrite everything you got (laughing).

MYE: (laughing)

JL: I don’t want us to over think things too much. It could take us to the next level of people being exposed to us or it could be just another Eyehategod record that comes out and the diehards listen to it and it kind of goes nowhere. I’d like it to be somewhere in between that, y’know?

MYE: Yeah. I’m just excited because whenever you come out with a new record the song titles are always so bad ass but make me laugh. “Inferior And Full Of Anxiety.” It doesn’t get better than that.

JL: (laughing) That’s Mike. He’s a genius writer. He got his book published now.

MYE: I forgot! What’s it called again?

JL: It’s called CANCER AS A SOCIAL ACTIVITY. It’s great. You gotta get it. Dude, this is a guy I grew up with and I look at his writing and it’s like…how does he come up with this shit!? I love reading Burroughs and Brion Gysin and shit, all the old stuff and all but I read Mike and it’s really good! People should be exposed to it. It’s fuckin’ strange! I mean, it’s a lot of the atmosphere we live in. Down here all plays a part of the music we write and all. It’s cool.

MYE: I’m glad you mentioned New Orleans. I mean, shit…I’ve been down there a couple of times the last few years and have some friends there. I saw the St.Vitus thing at One Eyed Jack’s a few years ago and was at Checkpoint Charlie’s over the summer. I was wondering some of your favorite venues down there?

JL: We played with this guy Quintron who plays low-fi kind of electronic shit. He’s got a bar in the basement of this house in the ninth ward. It’s called Spellcaster Lodge. It’s a whole other sub culture of people in New Orleans. We’ve known each other for years but have never really brought the two together. They’re more of an artistic type of group of people. We finally did a Halloween show together and it worked out great. It’s such a cool club, like his little world. That was one of the cooler places we’ve played in New Orleans. He has like 8 records out, him and this chic. It’s real low fi and he plays a big Hammond Organ. It’s out there and unique. It’s cool. Somebody doing something and they don’t give a fuck what people think about it. What else…Dixie Tavern was great. We were one of the first bands that played there and it ended up becoming one of the real spots that bands played when they came to New Orleans. Punk and hardcore or whatever. That was amazing for awhile. The Bridge Lounge before that was one of those places where…you could get away with anything in there (laughing). I don’t think anyone would even get off the bar stool. Some of the crazy shit I’ve seen go down in that place is just fuckin’ unreal.

MYE: I heard you are really into noise music also, right?

JL: Yeah, man. I got tons of stuff over the years. In the late 80’s and early 90’s I recorded a lot in my bedroom. Experimentation. Hooking up turntables through pedals. I put together all these four track tapes. In the mid 90’s I wanted to put the stuff out and then the whole Relapse thing jumped on the noise thing and it was like…I didn’t even want to put none of the shit out, man (laughing). It’s just like…they had a huge catalogue of every fucking noise thing just for the sake of putting out something obscure (laughing). But now I’ve got all these fuckin’ milk crates of cassettes! In the last few months a friend of mine named Steve invested into recording equipment and is gonna start his own recording thing. I started dumping all the noise stuff into his computer from my 4 track. It’s got different periods. A little cut up tape period. Some ambient stuff I went through. Pretty cool. Some of it I took on TAKE AS NEEDED FOR PAIN. “Disturbance.” A lot of the samples I put on the other Eyehategod records. I really want to put some of this stuff out.

MYE: I was in Chicago and dug how the noise scene there…everyone was into trading cassettes. Would you ever sell them to fans at EHG shows or maybe do a regular cd?

JL: I tried to do that one time but in the early 90’s. I made tapes and would dub a few and bring them with me on tour but it was never really something people were exposed to or got. I kind of quit doing it but all that stuff is coming back now. People are trading tapes again and all this shit! It’s a trip. That’s what I mean with these kids. At the same time people are getting real technical others are going back to the real primitive stuff too, which is cool. It aint dying out.

MYE: There’s definitely merit in it. What is it about the band…you mentioned fans and friendship earlier in the interview, but what is it on a personal level as a musician that makes you still excited to be your form of creative expression?

JL: Playing live. Some of these songs we’ve been playing for years now, dude, but I’m not bored of playing them at all. Even though we’re playing them they are always a little different each night, from room sounds to what we are feeling. If it was boring I wouldn’t do it anymore. That’d be a cop out. I have a family and stuff . It’s so cool playing live. The chemistry has never died. If anything, I think we’re playing at our best ever right now. Some of these shows…it’s fucking awesome.

MYE: What do you have to say to people who feel like you are about shock value or that heavy metal is just about volume and isn’t artful as other types of music?

JL: We’ve done our own thing. I don’t have to prove nothin’ to nobody. When we get up there and do our thing, it’s its own entity. You can feel it. If you can’t…you’re not really a fan. We live what we play. We’re not just doing this to be in a punk band. I could be doing a ton of stuff that would be better for my life right now, y’know what I mean? (laughing) I’m fuckin’ 38 years old! I’m in a van with the same dudes doing the same shit I’ve been doing since I was fuckin’ 16! Sometimes we look at each other and joke around, like, “What the fuck are we doing?” (laughing)

MYE: (laughing) Awesome.

JL: If anything, I love playing for myself and am fortunate I can share that with people. It comes from me and when I am with these guys we can present that to people. If they get off on it, that’s all I’m looking for. I’m not interested if people take it as an artform. When people started using the term sludge, I’m not trying to categorize or explain it in anyway. It’s just another form of blues, the same shit that’s been goin’ on down here forever.