Comprising early demos from 1990, a live on-air radio broadcast, and European tour recordings from April 2000,
10 Years of Abuse (And Still Broke) collects the detritus -- and there's plenty of it -- from
Eyehategod's hyper-negative first decade, and assembles it into a relatively coherent portrait of one ugly band. Of course,
Eyehategod has never presented life in a pastoral manner. In fact, compared to the dystopianism this quintet demonstrates, even a trip to detox might seem uplifting. Between the syrupy,
Melvins-influenced riffs, bronchitis-driven vocals, and brain-damaging feedback,
10 Years of Abuse and Still Broke is a uniformly painful, heavy listen. Naturally, the portrait painted on this disc is one of a band plagued by massive drug problems, van problems, tour problems, label problems, gear problems, and so on, but still retaining the will and desire to take the stage and play. The disc opens with extremely raw -- probably four-track at best -- versions of four songs from
Eyehategod's first album,
In the Name of Suffering. They differ little from the album tracks, except in quality. Next up, four songs recorded live on
KXLU in August of 1994. The last seven tunes from this album were recorded live on tour in Europe in April 2000. Again, these live versions -- as with the demos and radio tracks -- do not differ greatly from the album tracks, they're just meaner, nastier, grittier, uglier, and with a band like
Eyehategod, isn't that the point? ~ Patrick Kennedy
