Hungry for Weedeater

Got sludge? Just put on some Weedeater

If you look up Weedeater online, you’ll run across quite a few websites touting various lawn trimmers and their weed-killing prowess. If you look a little further, however, you'ill find a band by the same name that does just as much damage ... to your eardrums. 

The head-banging, self described "smoke doom" trio, which signed to the independent label Southern Lord in 2007, hail from North Carolina and epitomize the sound of sludge metal. Due to popular demand, the band makes its return to San Diego for the second time in six months, headlining Soda Bar Monday, with support from a couple of great, local heavy metal bands, Archons and Eukaryst.
 
I’m a relatively new recruit to the band’s legion of loyal fans, having only heard of them last July when they came through town, but their 2011 album (their newest), Jason…the Dragon, is a sticky mix of smoldering fuzz bass "schralping" (as musicians refer to riffing or shredding), vocal cord-tenderizing and thunderous drum pummeling reserved for classic stoner metal bands like Sleep, Kylesa and the Melvins.
 
While the entire band contributes equal parts to its scuzzy, sticky sound, the meat abnd potatoes of Weedeater’s grind comes from bassist “Dixie” Dave Collins’ nasty low-end riffage. Songs like the album’s title track and "Mancoon" rumble along as expected, switching from slow, smoldering tempos to fast-paced shredding at the drop of one very weighty dime -- while always throwing in a slight nod to some old-time, backwoods blues (they are from Carolina, after all) -- but their deafening power comes directly from the prominent, distorted bass cleaving.
 
During the making of the last album, Collins apparently had a nasty run-in with his self-described "favorite shotgun” and accidentally blew off his big toe. While that would understandably inspire anyone to write from a slightly darker place, the songs’ blunt lyricism is vicious, simple and rather direct.
 
"We will bury you/ I dare you/ Do like you do/ All that s--- you put me through/ I hate you," Collins spews on "Homecoming." It ain't exactly Shakespeare, but point me in the direction of any sludge metal album that is.
 
Fact is, the lyrics match the music, and for Weedeater, the music is all that matters.
 
Weedeater plays Soda Bar on Jan. 20 with Black Cobra, Archons and Eukaryst , $15, available online or at the door.
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