On Sunday Oct. 26, during the brisk 62 degree weather, a crowd gathered inside Starkville’s own Rick’s Cafe for the final show of New Orleans’ sludge metal scene founders Eyehategod’s (EHG’s) Fall 2025 Tour. Because of advertisements by Starkville DIY a month prior, students and local Starkville residents were given ample time to discover the band’s inimitable discography.
Joined by Starkville’s Sludgelung, Skin Graph and New Orleans’ upcoming metal group Slowhole, EHG set the stage for one of Rick’s heaviest venues in years. Formed in 1988, Eyehategod have produced aggressive, southern, hardcore blues sounds, from the earliest recordings of “In the Name of Suffering” in 1990 to “A History of Nomadic Behavior” in 2021 and everything in between.
Prior to the show, the Critter Craft Collective Art Market hosted a pop-up shop from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., showcasing some of its wildlife-themed prints and designs. Vendors sold anything from potted plants and hand-embroidered jewelry like those found at Knot Yours Truly to upcycled stuffed animals courtesy of Britney Mac and her Wuji Dollz.
One such vendor, senior Animal and Dairy Science major Chloe Skelton, displayed her hand-made crocheted patterns and jewelry. Skelton spoke about crocheting.
“I started out finding patterns on my own,” Skelton said. “One crochet pattern taught me the basics of using tension correctly with the crochet hooks, and I learned new patterns as I went along to try and create my own designs.”
She, like many others gathered at Rick’s, was anticipating the event.
“I [was] so excited for the show,” Skelton said. “I absolutely love all the bands that [were] going to be playing.”
Local band Skin Graph started the show at 7 p.m. with a twenty minute set consisting of tracks from their self-titled EP released this September and an energetic cover of Nirvana’s “Negative Creep.”
At 7:30 p.m., Sludgelung took the stage with songs from their EP “DEMONSTRATION.” This was also the first live performance of their single “Tusk” released on April 22 of this year.
Slowhole started their set at 8:05 p.m., providing shrill, dissonant vocals and a commanding presence to the stage. They played tracks from their self-titled EP released in Oct. 2024, consisting of songs such as “STAR CRUCIFIED” and “SWALLOWED WHOLE.”
By the time that EHG was set to take center stage, the crowd surged forward toward the barricade. The band, known for their shock-value lyrics, name and sound are meant to cause agitation.
Their signature sound is based around atonality and the intentional feedback resounding from the C standard tuning they are synonymous with along with the “stream of consciousness” and “confessional” style of lyricism that, often, is off-the-cuff. Hitting the stage with the thick, slowed-down sound of “Shoplift” and the punk brutality of “Blank,” EHG jumped right in to showing Starkville their trademarked New Orleans noise.
One student at the show, freshman conservation biology major Madison Villafane enjoyed the show with her friends and is looking forward to the next big event.
“My friends and I go to punk shows pretty frequently, and we [were] excited to go since there was a pretty big band in Starkville,” Villafane said. “I also found the courage to mosh for the first time there. It [was] so much fun, and I am a little sore but excited for the next show.”
EHG has displayed their unique, morose tone for decades for listeners like Villafane, and they do not plan on winding down. Since their inception in the late 1980s, EHG has purposefully created an abrasive sound based around the exact opposite of the thrash and speed metal subgenres of that decade, with a focus on purposeful dissonance and raw, unintelligible vocals.
The New Orleanian metal subgenre is characterized by its contortion of Southern blues influences, a nihilistic view of the city’s urban decay and personal experiences of struggle and hardship. The guttural wall of feedback emanating from the amps emulates the humid atmosphere of the city from which it originates. Fantastical and mythological themes from 1980s metal are in heavy contrast with the blunt realities that EHG provides.
Their lyrics come naturally, much like the distortion. Confusion, vacant parking lots, abandoned scrap yards, empty rooms, crowded places and fumes from broken down buses all provide the same inspiration: the past, the present and the future of a dilapidated and declining city.
Lyricism is almost like a Rorschach Test, with each person finding their own meaning behind the “ink-blots,” stated Mike IX Williams, EHG’s lead vocalist since 1989. The basic concepts are prevalent, but each person develops their own understanding from the screeching, shrill vocals.
Toward the end of the night, EHG slowed down their set with one of their many singles, “New Orleans is the New Vietnam,” followed by the closing track “Everything, Everyday” on their newest album “A History of Nomadic Behavior.”
Lily Behnam, a senior animal and dairy science major also in attendance, was excited to see all the new faces getting to experience what Starkville DIY and Rick’s has to offer.
“It was really cool to see all these bands on such a big stage with professional speaker systems when I am so used to seeing country music at Rick’s,” Behnam said. “The growth of this community never ceases to amaze me.”
The blend of southern blues rock, doom metal and hardcore punk resounded out of Rick’s Cafe as the night came to a close, leaving behind a cacophony of the commanding attention EHG and its opening acts left in their wake.
