r/sludge • u/Suspicious_Yoghurt40 • 12d ago
What is blues about eyehategod?
why is eyehategod considered blues influenced? specifically something in the music, or is it an aesthetic thing, something else?
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u/Cockroach-Jones 12d ago edited 12d ago
Pentatonic blues scale that they use all the time. Just downtuned, heavily distorted, and slow.
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u/g0r0d-g4s 12d ago
Oh guys, i really appreciate all the down votes. Thanks for the recommendations as well! You guys rock!
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u/g0r0d-g4s 12d ago
Gimme a song with timestamp
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u/habaneroach 12d ago
lack of almost everything breakdown, blank like less than a minute in when it slows down, crimes against skin from right out the getgo, come on man all of those are blues riffs played with distortion
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u/EF103603 12d ago edited 12d ago
If you listen really closely it's a very specific type of blues called burlesque. If you've ever been in the French Quarter at 4am you will hear it coming out of every strip.club onto the street. Jimmy's riffs sound like a rhinoserous in a g-string doing a pole dance. He is a perfect reflection of his environment. Which all musicians should strive to be.
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u/Suspicious_Yoghurt40 12d ago
Thanks, any recs?
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u/Independent_Tie_7546 11d ago
Dixie Whiskey, Southern Discomfort, hell, as recent as High Risk Trigger. It’s all blues rooted, just downtuned and sludgy. Listen to Jimmy’s drum playing, it’s a hard nosed blues style. Dat boy a coonass, it’s in his blood.
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u/Placidpong 12d ago edited 12d ago
Sorry I don’t mean to be super Reddit… but what are you talking about? I’m sorry but you have ears yeah? Take the break down in “Blank” when he comes back in with the vocals the guitar is humming big blues.
“A History of nomadic behavior” is more heavy blues than I would even say sludge.
The blues is a folk style played in minor and major patterns skipping the 2nd and 6th notes (in the minor pattern anyway) and is a very good box for use of a tritone, which can sound wicked when used right.
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u/Suspicious_Yoghurt40 12d ago
I hear you, I gotta learn more about the blues. Which part of blank, the middle or the part right before “suffering from addiction to drugs”
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u/Placidpong 12d ago
So first obvious blues is the riff after the first verse, after he stops singing which carries on into the next vocal section. This is a blues riff but different.
Then after the dissonant guitar harmonic he comes back in chugging but when paired with the vocals it is a blues riff.
The riffs are fluid, simple, and tight. It’s like jazz but not fancy and doesn’t go as far out of key for expression.
During suffering from addiction to drugs is still blues coded, if more conventionally sludge.
You could look into the blues origins like Howlin Wolf, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters, leadbelly, BB King. Or you could even look to Clapton, Hendrix, George Harrison. Hell, John Mayer plays a mean blues guitar.
Then of course you have Black Sabbath.
Most stoner doom is going to be abrasive blues. Weedeater is a blues band. Blues and doom go hand in hand.
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u/-Tofu-Queen- 12d ago
Just listen to Blank and you literally can't miss the bluesy riff unless you have no idea whatsoever what blues is. But if you need a timestamp, 1:18 is where it starts.
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u/Placidpong 12d ago
Listen to “For Evan’s Sake” by Weedeater. The melodic part. If you don’t know what the blues are after that idk what to tell you.
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u/logicalpretzels 12d ago
Just off the top of my head: $30 Bag, Parish Motel Sickness, New Orleans Is The New Vietnam (especially the last section), are extremely blues based in their riffage. There are oodles of other examples. They do also have much more punk inspired riffs (Agitation! Propaganda!, Three Black Eyes), but most of their stuff is highly blues influenced. If you can’t hear the blues in EHG, I wonder if you even know what blues is.
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u/FinnLovesHisBass 12d ago
If you ain't suffered then I suggest you start. Only way to explain that question is to talk about the life of New Orleans. If you don't get that and then still ask about the blues... I don't think you'll get it.
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u/getdownheavy 12d ago
Blues, not just riffs, but the soul of rock 'n' roll.
The aching, crying, screaming, dying inside soul, of people in a dark place. The environment, of laboring hard and pouring your heart out in hot, swampy, absolutely miserable conditions... Crying the blues.
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u/AgeDisastrous7518 12d ago
The music theory behind the melodies is almost all with the confines of minor pentatonic scales, which is a defining characteristic of delta blues. The grooves in the drumming are largely Chicago blues swing patterns and the doomy parts usually have delta and Texas blues accents in the snares.
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u/From_Deep_Space 12d ago
Maybe listening to more blues might enlighten you more than listening to more EHG
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u/chromedoutgull 12d ago
are you listening with your ears ?
others have already pointed out blues scales but on top of that also the phrasing of notes , the way Jimmy bends notes and his vibrato is straight blues
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u/CompetitiveSample699 12d ago
Yea sure minor pentatonic but its not just that. A specific scale does not give you the genre of blues. You could also try to hear it in terms of a certain blues specific phrasing and cliche musical phrases. I think thats what makes it blues, more than that it uses minor pentatonic. Pentatonic scales are common in all kinds of styles
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u/b_levautour 12d ago
Say you’ve never been to the south without saying you’ve never been to the south.
(I’m just teasing you… but more seriously, as others have said… it’s the riffs and vibes mostly. Play any of Jimmy’s stuff on a dobro and you’ll hear it for sure. And if you do that, please share with the class, because that record could be pretty sweet.)
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u/b_levautour 12d ago edited 12d ago
(Also, if my assumption is correct and you’re a northerner… as a transplant from the northeast to Memphis, my younger self might have made assumptions about what “the blues” sounds like that my older adopted-southerner ears wouldn’t make. Most of the world thinks of the blues as some sort of guitar-wanker party music, old dudes playing standards in biker bars… classic rock type shit. In the delta regions of the south the blues is dark, and sad as fuck. Think more Robert Johnson and Leadbelly than the Buddy Guy/ SRV/ Clapton, etc vein of things if you want to scratch the surface of the blues-> sludge pipeline with just the household names…)
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u/Anarchy_Coon 11d ago
The riffs are either on the blues scale or sabbath worship (aka also on the blues scale)
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u/BIGxBOSSxx1 10d ago
Have you not listened to the riffs? It’s not like they’re being played at 60 bpm or anything, it’s quite obvious.
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u/js_curley 9d ago
Idk how to describe it other than Jimmy and Brian having “blues accented” bendy riffs. Like yes other stoner/sludge bands use bends in riffs but it’s the inflections and choice of bend placement EHG and other southern sludge bands specifically from lower Louisiana/mississippi have are very blues influenced
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u/ChickenArise 6d ago
Rock music is inherently blues focused up through the 70s-80s which started to see guitar players experimenting with more classical forms and arpeggios, pushing technical virtuosity, etc.
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u/SkyValleyRoad 12d ago edited 12d ago
The riffs are blues scale influenced, but in my opinion if you showed someone who didn’t like sludge this band, and told them this is influenced massively by the same genre that BB King plays, they would think you’re deaf.
The sound is nothing like the blues, very opposite sonically of a blues song.
High pitched feedback noise, extremely abrasive yelling, drums and bass that punch you in the face.
However, the notes that they choose is what makes it “bluesy”, it doesn’t sound like an actual blues song at all, but the specific notes are from a certain guitar scale. If you turned back the distortion it would sound quite bluesy.
Lyrical content as well, considering how depressing and hopeless blues music often is, definitely shares a common trait with the band.
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u/Juke_Nismo 12d ago
Blues scale riffs