Eyehategod’s Mike IX Williams on 30 years of Take as Needed for Pain

Mike IX WIlliams of Eyehategod. // Photo by Jeff Howlett

Mike IX Williams doesn’t sing. He doesn’t scream or growl, either, unlike so many of his contemporaries in the world of extreme music. Nay, he retches. He dry-heaves. You can practically hear every glob of phlegm, scuzz, and sputum dripping from the Eyehategod frontman’s throat when he performs. He sounds like a virus that picked up a microphone or the Mucinex mascot if he got really into Black Sabbath.

Eyehategod will bring its sickening, Southern-fried blend of hardcore and heavy metal to Kansas City on September 18 during its fall tour. The band is also celebrating the 30^th anniversary of its critically acclaimed sophomore album, Take as Needed for Pain.

“I still think that album is cool,” Williams says. “A lot of people seem to love it.”

Take as Needed for Pain is considered a staple of the sludge metal genre, a label that Williams has always rejected. Still, with its crapulous riffs and caterwauling shards of guitar feedback, it’s hard to deny the album’s influence on the shape of sludge to come.

We spoke to Williams before Eyehategod’s Sept. 18 recordBar gig to discuss the enduring appeal of Take as Needed for Pain, the band’s relentless touring schedule, and his refusal to be musically pigeonholed.

The Pitch: How does Take as Needed for Pain sound to you 30 years later?

Williams: It still sounds great to me. It’s the album where we found our sound. We did an album before that, which is recorded pretty crazy-sounding. It’s really primitive. Not that Take as Needed for Pain is some well-produced thing, but we found our sound. We were learning how to write songs better, and we found what Eyehategod is supposed to be. There are always things, when you look back on album, that you could change, but I really wouldn’t change anything on any record, because our albums are like photographs of an era, of the band at that time.

You’ve said before that you don’t see Eyehategod as a metal band. Why do you think that label has stuck?

Because journalists would call us that in the past, and because of our association with Pantera. We toured with them back in the ‘90s, and Phil Anselmo has always been a fan and a friend. But I think it’s just laziness on journalists’ parts. We’re not metal, but we’re not punk either. My part in the band leans more toward the punk rock side. I got into punk in 1978. I was a twelve-year-old boy getting into the Sex Pistols, so that’s still with me. I still love that stuff.

With heavy, extreme kind of music, people just go, “oh, that’s metal.” Then they decided it was “sludge metal,” whatever that means. I hate that title, but it is what it is. Now there are bands that want to be sludge metal, and that’s fine…We were just doing what we wanted to hear. I like the Germs, the Dead Boys, Black Sabbath, and Black Flag, but we also love St. Vitus, Confessor, and Trouble. So it just seemed natural to us to put all that together. And even noise stuff, with all the feedback — bands like SPK or Throbbing Gristle, we’re also influenced by.

Eyehategod. // photo by Albert Licano

In the digital age, it seems like people are moving away from that impulse to pigeonhole artists — genre is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Definitely. I’ve seen kids now, they all wear jackets with all these patches on them. And I’ll see the (patches), like, “wow, that’s really open minded. They like Judas Priest and The Misfits.” When I was growing up, there were strict lines…At punk shows, it’d be like, “if a long-haired guy shows up here, these people are going to kick their ass.”

That’s why I started liking Venom and Motorhead back in the late ‘70s…they sound like a punk band, but they had long hair. My friends would be like, “I can’t listen to them.” I’d ask why, and they’d say, “because they look like bikers. They’re hippies.” I’m like, “what are you talking about? They’re awesome!” Same with Venom. They’re like a long-haired punk band to me. Their music is recorded pretty badly, it’s sloppy, it’s fast, and it’s heavy. It’s like the kind of punk I like. The haircuts didn’t matter.

How has the tour been going so far?

The tour has been great…It’s really cool that our crowd gets younger and younger every year and that I keep seeing new faces at our shows. That’s a good sign for an old band like us, that we see young kids and new faces.

We’re still pretty underground for what we are, and I think people see something in that. People pass it on to their kids. I’ve seen parents come out with their kids. Then their kids come out, and their kids come out. Being a cult band, it’s not like we got super popular then died out. We’ve just cruised along at the same level, as far as being an underground, extreme band. Of course, you’ll have an off night on a Monday night in some small town, but 99% of the shows are amazing to this day. It really baffles us, after being a band that we didn’t even take seriously in the beginning.

Eyehategod is known for its nonstop touring. How has constantly being on the move informed your perspective on life?

Traveling, to me, is knowledge. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t traveled as much as we have, and I still love it. I don’t see myself settling down at any point in the near future. We want to keep doing this band until we can’t anymore. We’ve always said we’d do it until it wasn’t fun, but we’re still having fun.

One of my favorite bands is Black Flag. I liked their work ethic. We don’t practice daily like they did, but we like to tour as much as possible. We’ve been to Malaysia, Taiwan, Israel, and Tasmania. We’ve been to many places, I can’t even remember them all…Even touring America, there’s something new every day. Playing music for different people every day is what I wanted to do as a kid, and now I’m doing it. So there’s no reason to quit.

And yeah, we’ve had miserable tours before, because of who knows what—drugs, probably. Mostly drugs and alcohol in the past. But we just move forward, and it makes me happy.

Eyehategod play the RecordBar with Goatwhore on Monday, September 18. Details on that show here.