EYEHATEGOD is New Orlean’s sickest sons. These crusty, sludge-slinging seraphims have been rallying squat dwellers and filthy wallowing rejects to venture forth from their dusty dumper tombs for over three decades now to pitch a riot before the band’s all-consuming rackett. Their blaspheming bluster has taken them all over the world, from Singapore to Greece, leaving a river of slime and broken bodies in their wake.
EYEHATEGOD would probably still be on tour right at this very moment if it weren’t for the only thing more virulent than their sound, the COVID 19 pandemic. The lockdowns to prevent the spread of the disease started in Eastern Europe around March 2020, catching the band while they were on tour in Ukraine and serving them with the ultimatum to either fly back home while they still could, or try to wait it out in a hotel in Kiev. I don’t think I have to tell you which option the band went in for. Even last March, it was pretty clear that the pandemic was not going to blow over in the course of a weekend.
In coming home the band found themselves without the usual creative outlet of live performances, so they settled into working on their latest album, A History of Nomadic Behavior. The album drops tomorrow, Friday, March 12 via Century Media. It’s their first LP since 2014’s self-titled, and it’s as badass as anything they’ve ever released. We already have a review of it up on our site!
The New Noise team is understandably stoked about EYEHATEGOD’s new album and that’s why we caught up with Mike ‘IX’ Williams to talk about how it came together and hear the story of how he and the band made a narrow escape from Europe last year. We also touch on lighter topics as well, like what Mike reads during his downtime and his thoughts on EYEHATEGOD parody bands.
It’s a well-rounded and thoughtful conversation with a man best known for being the feral voice of one of the ugliest sounding bands on the planet Earth. We hope you’ll enjoy.
The following conversation took place on January 13, 2021 over the phone between Mike Williams and Editor Mick R. The transcript has been edited slightly for the sake of clarity and brevity.
Thanks for taking the time to chat with New Noise, Mike.
I meant to ask, is this the US New Noise, or the one from France? I meant to ask because when I was looking at my calendar I thought I double-booked myself.
This comes up a lot with international artists actually. We’re the US one. We’re not at all connected with the one in France. Did they get in touch with you about your new album too?
Yeah, they did. Which of you came first?
We did. We’re the first, and the best.
That’s like having a band name that you share with another band. You just have to be the better band. Make people forget the other one.
You have to be the one that everybody likes.
Exactly.
So when you were on tour last year, did you run into an Eyehategod France?
[Laughs] No, not yet. We probably will eventually, but not yet. When we were over there, there was a band from, I think Russia, called EYEHATELUCY. And they used our logo font and did everything else the same as us. And their graphics are similar. So I don’t know if that was kind of a novelty thing or what… but that was pretty interesting.
Okay, cool. Well, I’m glad people can still have an easy time finding you on Google.
Yeah, I was gonna say that’s one good thing about our band name is that no one has been stupid enough to try and take it. [Laughs] We pretty much got it exclusively.
I think you have a great band name! It really stands out.
That was the whole point. We wanted it to be super different. And it did not fit any expectations. We like to make people think, you know, and we kind of like that it confuses people.
When I was in high school I would see your band name on kids’ t-shirts at shows and I had no idea what it meant. But I would keep seeing your name on people’s clothes and eventually I was like, “Ok, I have to look this up.” Googling your name after seeing it on a shirt is actually how I discovered you.
Cool, man. Yeah, the confusion gets people’s attention. It works.
Now you have a new album coming out called A History of Nomadic Behavior, which I feel is just a very emblematic title for you. It sums up a lot about your band. You guys tour really hard. I believe you’ve literally been on tour since 2017?
It’s a long story, but yeah, pretty much. We started touring in April of 2017. And basically ended in March of 2020 when the pandemic happened, mostly because we just kept getting offers. The most we were off in those three years was about three weeks. That was the longest period of time we were off in that entire tour. So it was non-stop, which was great. We really like to tour. So it was perfect.
Were you in a van for most of that time?
We were in everything you could imagine. I mean, we were in a box. We we’re in a van. We were on the Greyhound of Russia. We played so many countries that we probably took every kind of transportation imaginable. We played Vietnam and Tel Aviv, Tasmania, New Zealand, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. We did five shows in Indonesia, which was amazing. So we probably took everything there is. One night Gary [Mader] had forgotten something, his pedal or something, and he got on the back of somebody’s motorcycle, and they took him back to the hotel to get his equipment. So we were on everything, you know.
Wow, that’s wild. I don’t know that you’ve done it yet, but I could see you guys traveling by dirigible for a future tour.
I wouldn’t be surprised.
It might be safer than flying commercial, you know. You’re not in an enclosed environment and there is plenty of cross-breeze.
We should get one of those.
Just fill it up in New Orleans, take off, and do a world tour in eighty days.
Yeah, right on. [Laughs]
So had you been through Eastern Europe and Asia before?
Well, yes and no, we’ve been to Japan maybe three times now. And Japan is incredible. But as far as Southeast Asia, we’ve been to the Philippines twice. We’ve played Manila, and another city. So we had gone near there before. And like we did Singapore and Malaysia separately from the rest. And we had done that earlier, maybe in 2019. And then in 2020, we ended up going back and doing Indonesia, Taiwan and all that stuff. So we’ve been through Asia twice now.
Were these mostly small club shows? Or, were you in big theaters for any of them?
No, I mean, we mostly play small clubs, because we like it better. But there was there were a couple of shows in Indonesia, like in Bandung, which is a big city there, and Jakarta as well, that were just huge shows. I mean, the clubs were like one of those places that’s kind of a high school gymnasium or something, and it was just packed with people. The kids were going insane, man. It’s really cool to see that and be there you know. And we played this outdoor festival, I think that was Bandung, an outdoor festival, and there were just a bunch of other bands, and we headlined one of the nights. All of the bands were extremely popular, but I’ve never heard of any of them. Some of them were commercial rock bands and things like that, but the whole show was pretty big. But a lot of them were just clubs. We did three shows in Mexico, and the clubs were just tiny, but they were all super packed. And those were my favorite kind of shows, where it’s a smaller place, but it’s just packed and people are going insane!
I saw you come through Chicago in the Winter of 2019 for Frozen Tundra at the Empty Bottle. And that was an unbelievable show.
Yeah, that was a weird night for some reason. But yeah, I remember that. We’ve played Chicago so many times it’s almost embarrassing. I mean, we’ve kind of overdone it, I think.
Don’t tell me that. [Laughs]
We’ve played Cobra Lounge maybe four or five times, and the Empty Bottle… so many times. We’ve even played in Joliet [, Illinois]. Some other places like outside Chicago. And we were on the Black Label Society and Corrosion of Conformity tour, and we played House of Blues. So we play Chicago a lot and somehow people still seem to like us. You can overdo it, that’s the thing. But we’ll always come back. We love Chicago.
Were there any new bands you met on that big tour that inspired you or rejuvenated your love and interest in music?
My interest in music is always at 100%. So no, we didn’t feel inspired by any bands we met. Just lots of people, cool people from all over the world. And I don’t even like people that much, but we met a lot of cool people on the road, and it can give you a little faith in humanity. I’m thinking back on some of the people that were just super cool, in Indonesia, and South America, like Lima and Peru. They’re like a little second family down there. The people you meet, especially as a musician, are just awesome. I don’t always see the opening band or hang out with them, sometimes you just don’t have the time, especially on a long tour, but the people you meet, who come to the shows, are usually great.
Right, when you’re traveling as much as you, you need time to decompress. And that means that you’re not going to be at everybody’s merch table shaking hands every night.
Yeah, you don’t have the time. Like when we were doing Southeast Asia in Thailand, we flew in six hours before the show. We flew every day in Southeast Asia. We’d get in like six hours before the show, and the first thing we’d want to do is take a nap. When you’re up late the night before, so you got to do that. And then you get to the show after the opening bands have already played, and then you play, and then we go back to the hotel and sleep for four more hours, get up, and then you have to catch another flight. So yeah, we didn’t really have time to hang out and watch bands and things like that.
How were you passing time on tour? Like, on days when you’re just traveling? Do you try to relax, or what do you do?
You get a small amount of time to lay down and rest. Time like that is hard to come by. So naps are everybody’s favorite pastime. And some people, like Gary [Mader, bassist], he likes to, and I don’t know how he does it, but he goes for walks around the city we’re in. For me, when we get to the city we’re playing, I just need some time off, you know, for myself. But while we’re traveling, I like to read. And then there are those crazy phones we all have, that we like to waste time with…
What are you reading on tour?
I read so much stuff. I mean, the last book I read was by Jeffrey Lee Pierce. He was the singer for the Gun Club. I read a lot of music biographies. It depends on what will fit into my bag. [Laughs] I wanted to bring the Keith Richards book on tour, but it’s so thick and it’s a hardcover. So I couldn’t bring that one. It won’t fit in my bag.
Which book by him is that?
It’s his autobiography. It’s like his whole story. It’s a great book! I mean, I like reading other biographies, too. But musicians like him have a long history. So it’s cool to read all that stuff.
Did you learn any sort of life lessons from Keith Richards’s book?
No, not really. [Laughs] I don’t really take life lessons. We kind of lived our own path here in EYEHATEGOD. Consequences and all. We just went for it. We’re still going for it. We just do our own thing. But it’s interesting to read about other musicians, and how they handle touring and things like that. But I read other biographies, of people in movies, or you know, other writers or things like that.
You were in the hospital before the long tour started. Is that correct?
Yeah, 2016 I was in the hospital for three months. Waiting for a new liver. And I got it. So I’m good.
Are you getting much use out of it on tour?
I haven’t. I might have a glass of wine on tour, you know, but I don’t drink like I used to drink. No, not at all. I mean, I don’t even feel like doing it. It’s kind of one of those things you can’t do heavy while you are on tour. I haven’t drank during the pandemic at all, like since March of last year. Probably even before that. I mean, the guys in my band drink beer. I don’t drink beer. And it got to the point, where we toured so much, that by the end of 2019, all the guys in my band were just over it. They couldn’t drink and they were totally sick of the whole thing. Like, you know, waking up feeling like shit. It was too hectic with the schedule. So that was kind of funny to see. They toured themselves sober.
It’s better than a twelve-step program, right?
Yeah, I mean, definitely. That’s advice to give out, you know, tour until you almost pass out. Maybe it’s only certain people, but it worked for them. Not that they were trying. They weren’t trying to stop. [Laughs]
Well, I’m glad for you and the guys that you’re taking care of yourselves and are still alive. Because it sounds like you had a bit of a scare there while you were on tour in Eastern Europe. I heard things were shutting down due to the pandemic while you were in Ukraine and you had to act fast in order to get home and not get stuck there.
Yeah, we were in Kiev. We had just done the Napalm Death tour at the end of January and the beginning of February of 2020. And so we finished that, and that was three and a half weeks or something, I don’t know, it’s all kind of blurry. But we did that tour with Napalm Death, Rotten Sound, Misery Index, and this band called Bat, which is members of Municipal Waste. Those guys are real cool.
So anyway, we’re on that tour, and that ended, so as insane as we are, we had more shows booked by ourselves. We had like five or six headline shows after the Napalm Death tour. So we took off after that, and the pandemic was starting to happen. We were seeing it in the news. And you know, we just didn’t know what to do. Everybody’s just like, “I don’t know, what are we gonna do? What should we do? We don’t know. Let’s just keep doing shows until we hear more about what’s going on.” So we did Athens, Greece, and another city. And then we headed to Kiev, Ukraine. And we got there and we got settled. We got to our hotels, and we had just eaten and went to sleep. And then we heard that they were shutting the borders. Like, “If you’re not out of there by a certain time, you’ll have to stay there.” Whether that was true or not, I don’t know.
Later we heard that it was fine for American citizens to go home, so I don’t even know. But a lot of airlines were shutting down service and we could only switch planes at certain points, things like that. So we had to cancel that show, and we have canceled Moscow and St. Petersburg. We feel really bad about it, it sucks. Some buddy of ours wrote us on our Facebook, and was like, “You canceled on purpose!” And I’m like, why would you even say that? We would never do that. Yeah, we’ve missed shows and stuff in the past. But there was this pandemic thing so we had to leave and cancel the shows. And we’re gonna make those up. But it was crazy man, having to just get up and leave at like three or four in the morning when we heard the news about the border.
Oh, my god. So did your tour manager kind of wake you up and tell, “Hey, guys, we got to get on some flights, like, the border’s about to close!”
We were watching it happen on the news actually. And we just figured the best thing to do would be to get out of there while we could. If they’re closing borders, we didn’t have a choice. To be stuck over there for thirty days or something when we couldn’t play shows, couldn’t do anything, financially it would have been just awful. I mean it’s a great place to be stuck. Kiev is an awesome city, but, financially, it would have cost us everything. So that’s what happened. We were there up until the last minute of this pandemic starting.
What was it like being over there with the news coming about the virus and learning that it was not like the normal flu? This was not like some of the pandemics scares that we’ve had in recent memory. This was not contained. It is going to spread and there is no way of stopping it.
It was wild man, it was really wild. Because you’d hear exaggerations. With the media, you don’t know what is exaggerated and not, or whatever. But you know, we were over there the same exact time as Testament and, I think, Death Angel. They were doing a tour a few cities away, and those guys ended up getting COVID. A bunch of people on that tour got really sick.
I didn’t know that.
Yeah, Chuck Billy from Testament got sick. It wasn’t good. It was pretty bad for some of those guys. But we were in the same areas at the same time. So we’re really lucky. Nobody in the tour party, out of five bands on tour, none of us got COVID, so we’re pretty lucky. I feel bad for those other guys, that that happened, but I think everybody’s okay now.
Well, I guess one of the good things about you having to come home and be in one place for a little while is that we have a new album from you. Did you have most of this material written by the time that the lockdown went into effect, or was it the lockdown that kind of caused you to focus and get it done?
No, we had some of that stuff written by 2018. Maybe a couple of songs even before that. We had done a demo around 2018, but we ended up rerecording that because we had written some new songs. So it’s a combination of stuff from 2018 and 2019. So that was done while we were in Europe in March of last year, the music was done. It still needed a few little things here and there, but for the most part, it was done. So in June or July of this year, I went to Chicago, which was kind of scary, because I had to fly, but it was very socially distanced, and it seemed safe. So I went to Chicago and met my friend Sanford Parker, who I’m in another band with called Corrections House. He has a studio. That was my best bet to do the vocals the way I wanted to, and have someone there that knew my style and everything. So I did that in a week, finished the vocals and then they mixed the album in New Orleans. And that’s it. We were gonna take the rest of last year off anyway, like we had figured that from March till at least November of last year, we were going to take off to finish the album, do the vocals and then mix and master it, and all that. But, you know, it ended up being much longer than that. We were forced to take time off, but it did get the album completely done. So that’s where we’re at right now.
Your vocals sound really good on it, by the way. I think this is probably the clearest that your vocals have probably ever been.
You’re right, they are clearer, more pronounced. And that wasn’t a conscious thing. I really didn’t even go in there and say, “I’m gonna do it like this!” Sometimes you go to the studio and you find yourself in that snapshot of time. The studio is basically like a photograph. You go in, and that’s where the band’s at in that moment. It just happened that I had some good lyrics. Well, I always think I have good lyrics. [Laughs] I always do! But as opposed to the older stuff that was you know, more distorted and whatever. But, yeah, I’m glad that you like that. Because you know, some people want to hear the same album over and over. And I don’t understand that. It’s like, no matter what you do, with social media today, somebody’s gonna complain about it. And I’ve already gotten a few comments on the couple of songs that we’ve released already. “High-Risk Trigger.” People are like, “I can understand Mike! This sucks!” [Laughs] It’s the same band. We can’t sound like anybody else. So it sounds like EYEHATEGOD, it’s just between 2018 and 2020. That’s a snapshot of that time period. I think it’s cool. It’s definitely not as noisy and it’s mixed better. I don’t know, we’ll see what people think about the whole record when it comes out. I mean, the reactions been great for the song that’s we’ve released, besides a few weirdos.
Yeah, who don’t actually want to hear what you’re saying? Which is weird.
Yeah, it’s so strange. These days you can’t please everybody. It’s impossible. No matter what you do. If you’re doing any kind of art, like music or even drawing or painting or anything like that, somebody is not going to like it. They’re gonna have their reasons for why they don’t like it. So it is what it is. We don’t care. We’ve never cared what people think. It’s our band. It sounds like us. So we’re happy with it.
Yeah, and if somebody wants to hear muddier vocals they can listen to In the Name of Suffering. It still exists.
Exactly! Which is an album we recorded when we were in our 20s and had no idea how to be in a studio, you know. It’s like, that’s a snapshot of that time. We had no idea what we were doing back then. That album was recorded straight live. The whole thing. We were like, “Overdubs? What’s that?” But it is what it is, like I said, I love it all.
It’s sort of ironic that you’re having to stay in place, while you release an album called A History of Nomadic Behavior. It feels, in some ways, sort of like a capstone to your career. You just seem to have a very clear idea of what the band’s supposed to be doing right now.
Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. Like I was saying about the first album and not have a clue what we’re doing, it was still fun to do. You know, we were a young band, but now, it’s strange to say, but we’ve matured, and we’ve evolved. But not that much. We still have the same style and the same basic sound. But with any bands, almost every album is going to be different in some way. You know, I think that’s a good thing.
Yeah, I’m curious about some of the instrumentation on this album as well. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels like there’s a more pronounced blues influence on this one. Like, you guys have always had that strong blues influence, but it really is coming out strongly on this record.
No, I’m glad you noticed that because I was just telling someone else today in an interview the same thing. Some of the songs are more bluesy. Like, obviously bluesy. That’s a lot Jimmy [Bower]’s writing. That’s the thing too, we’ve become better musicians after all these years. I mean, I think it shows in the songwriting and stuff. I mean, even on the last album, the self-titled album, I thought that was the beginning of us being way better songwriters than we were back in the day. That happens to a lot of bands. But just because we can play better doesn’t mean we’re gonna write more technical stuff or anything, we still like the basic, bluesy stuff. People call us southern rock or whatever, but I don’t… I guess there’s kind of that beat and that backbeat is there sometimes, but it doesn’t actually sound like southern rock.
There is kind of a folky quality to your music that I always found interesting, as well. I know that maybe sounds weird to hear, but it just sounds like you’re sort of speaking from experience and just living life. And that’s always what the blues was about. That’s always what American folk is about.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I agree with that. I mean, my lyrics have always been a little abstract in a way but they’ve always been about the human condition. I talk a lot about mental illness and I have a very hallucinogenic style, but it comes from personal experience. Like with the blues. The blues has personal lyrics about misery and suffering. And I think that goes into our stuff as well.
A lot of people’s experience of America is that of being in a haze of drugs and suffering and that’s something that you’ve always been able to tap into. That underbelly of Americana.
Yeah, I’m glad you said that. We listen to a lot of blues on tour and being from New Orleans… well, I was born in North Carolina but grew up in New Orleans, and hearing all those kinds of folk and blues from a young age. That really affected me and it comes out in our music.
Do you have any hopes for 2021?
Honestly, we just want to get back out on tour. There are so many big things going on right now, and it seems bigger than any of us can solve. I don’t know what’s going to happen and things are going to be different when we do get back out there, but we’d like to get back out there because we’re a live band, man. We just want to play.
Read our review of A History of Nomadic Behavior here.
Pre-order A History of Nomadic Behavior here.
