Eye Flys
Eye Flys
THRILL JOCKEY
Eye Flys excel at the art of the ugly. The Philadelphia troupe specializes in a heavy and nauseating churn, occupying a rarefied but noxious space where noise rock overlaps with grunge and sludge metal. Each of the three members of the group cut their teeth in other muck-slinging outfits such as Callous, Full of Hell, and Backslider, and the shape of their misanthropic scrape—nodding equally to the ’90s-era Amphetamine Reptile roster and Nirvana’s Bleach (not to mention Melvins, who lent the trio their name)—has only grown more refined and potent since the release of their 2020 debut, the gloriously gross Tub of Lard.
At a lean 25 minutes, Eye Flys’ self-titled sophomore album offers precious little throat clearing as the group dispense their bile. Each of its eight songs is alternately violent and vile, coated in a thick layer of filth-caked distortion. Where contemporaries like Chat Pile let the discomfort linger a little longer, Eye Flys don’t bother risking the bloat. They get in, fuck shit up, and then get right back out. You’ll hardly know what hit you.
With a squeal of feedback and a menacing crack of the drums, Eye Flys come to life on opening track “Trepanation Summer,” which carries a badass strut within its malevolent presence. Those three minutes set the tone for the remainder of the album, which scarcely strays from a palette of sludge ’n’ scrape, whether the group leans more heavily on a manic grunge assault on “Tuck & Roll,” slow down the tempo and ramp up the terror on the appropriately disgusting “Draining Pus,” or inject a bit of Jesus Lizard–style rhythmic rumble on “Sleep Forever.” There are no acoustic guitars to be found here, no strings, no horns—just one application of downtuned and distorted mayhem after another.
A record this nasty and ill-tempered warrants a similarly mean vocal approach, and lead growler Jake Smith spews misanthropic one liners throughout Eye Flys. At one moment, he laments, “Another day, another asshole,” against the midtempo crunch of “Feeding Regression.” At another, he offers visions of filth on the pummeling “What’s That Behind Your Ear?,” sneering, “There’s shit everywhere!” And at the climax of the seasick slosh of closing dirge “Bananarchy Zoo,” he offers a terrifying warning: “Everything around here wants to kill you.”
It’s hard not to get that sense throughout the entirety of Eye Flys’ second album, a landscape of toxic substances and feral beasts. It’s an awesome display of grime and contamination—just so long as you don’t touch anything.
