Sitting Down With Sludgelung, Starkville’s Own Doom Metal Band
Interview via Nash Jones — @_nash_jones
“I think our band kinda happened at the exact right time.”
I’m on a call with two-thirds of Mississippian sludge-metal band Sludgelung, who is embarking on their second tour this upcoming January. The Starkville-based band is made up of members Christian Sowers on vocals and bass, Max Hyche on guitar, and Josh Whitfield on drums. My interview is with Sowers and Hyche, as Whitfield is unable to join us.
Sludgelung from left to right: Max Hyche, Christian Sowers, Josh Whitfield via Andy Evans
I first ask for an overview of Sludgelung and the music they make.
“We’re a hardcore sludge band from Starkville. Sludge is more rooted in the New Orleans scene. It’s hardcore-adjacent with groove-metal inspiration… it has the best of all worlds in my opinion,” Hyche says.
About the start of the band, Hyche tells me,
“Me and Christian went to high school together and we joked around about starting a band… we never did it in high school, but when I came back from community college we did.”
Sowers with Sludgelung
“Then we ended up picking up Josh,” Sowers mentions.
“Yeah, everybody knows Josh as the drummer of Bored To Tears as well, and he was more than happy to hop on, and it’s been pretty uphill ever since,” Hyche says. Bored to Tears is an emo band also based in Starkville.
Whitfield with Bored to Tears (left) Whitfield with Sludgelung (right)
“We’ve done a lot more than I thought we would ever be able to… getting to do a demo, now we’re going on a second tour, and next semester our full-length album comes out, which we’re recording for right now.”
I mention that I saw they were recording at Wallace St. Paul’s house, another member of Bored To Tears. Hyche laughs and shows me that’s where they are right now. There has not been much of a music scene in Starkville until the past few years, but an expansive DIY scene has come to light recently.
“There’s a lot of creative people in Starkville, a lot of good music,” Sowers says, “We’ve been pretty lucky… starting writing like four songs, playing shows in Starkville, being the first band of our kind in Starkville, started playing Hattiesburg (Southern MS) and Jackson (MS), and branching out from there.”
“If Sludgelung had happened any later, it wouldn’t have been as successful,” Hyche states. Sowers expands on that. “Yeah, I think we started just as hardcore started getting really popular in Birmingham (AL) and Hattiesburg. There are a lot of people who are into this kind of music, but there aren’t a lot of bands that make it anymore.”
I mention Hattiesburg being a major epicenter for southern hardcore, Hyche replies, “I like to think of Starkville as the younger brother, and Hattiesburg being the cool older brother.”
About their upcoming tour, Sowers tells me, “We kind of threw [our last tour] together on short-notice. We didn’t properly plan for everything. This tour was a lot more organized, and we’re going to places that we’ve never played.”
“We’re covering six states in six days, so that’s going to be pretty cool,” says Hyche.
“What was the booking process like?” I ask, “I know Lishman [a founder of Starkville DIY] booked the shows, right?” Hyche says that they kept the last tour more local due to being fairly last-minute, and Lishman was able to piece it together. This upcoming tour was planned far beforehand.
“Since [our last tour] we’ve made some friends from these areas. Just pretty much hitting up local artists. People you know who know other people who know other people, and it’ll eventually get back to you.”
Sowers talks about the interconnectedness of DIY scenes, “You meet some people and keep in touch with them, and tell them ‘hey i’m thinking about coming to this spot,’ and usually they’ll give you a place to stay and help you book a show.”
“Every scene isn’t as many steps apart as people think it is,” Hyche remarks.
“We’re really lucky in Starkville. Everyone is really open with the music and there’s a strong community base… the only reason Sludgelung was able to do stuff like this is because people are so supportive of local music,” says Sowers.
I ask, “How are you feeling about playing these places you haven’t before then?”
“I’m so excited, I’m so excited,” Sowers replies immediately.
Hyche is too, but jokes how they’ve played different areas at exactly the wrong time, the south at the beginning of summer, and now the Midwest in the winter.
Hyche with Sludgelung
About the shows, they say they’re excited for new people to hear them, and to play songs people haven’t heard.
“We’re going to play some older stuff, but hopefully we’ll play some songs that we’ve never played before live for the first time.” Sowers says, “The whole point of Sludgelung is that we don’t take ourselves too seriously but we still try to have quality stuff, y’know, people paid money to see us play. We just try to have as much fun while providing the maximum amount of entertainment… We’re just here to have fun and we want other people to have fun, and I think we’re really lucky that other people kinda get that.”
I talk about how high-energy their crowds are. The first time I saw them was an impromptu set at the end of the arts festival, The Midnight Bizarre. A band had dropped the bill and couldn’t make it, and Whitfield approached Sowers and Hyche, having their gear still loaded from a previous gig.
“Then we went up to Max and Max was terrified,” Sowers laughs.
They reflect on their early performances and music, “It’s not on the production or anything, it’s just that we’ve gotten a lot better [since the demo],” Hyche says. “We’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t,” Sowers agrees, “And I’m really excited for this album to come out… I think we’re very lucky, especially for Josh and how much he puts into it. He finished his drum parts earlier.”
I ask about their sound and inspirations. When I first heard Sludgelung, I hadn’t heard anything like it before.
Sowers tells me a story of visiting Nashville. “I was a really big White Stripes fan in high school, and for my birthday I wanted to visit Third Man Records and do the Blue Room Tour… The band Sleep had been there a couple weeks before and recorded a live album there… They played us the recording before it got mixed. Hearing Matt Pike’s guitar– That’s when I heard Marijuananaut for the first time– It was that riff that just got me hooked. Then I sent it to Max and he got hooked too… Our biggest influence early on was Weedeater… But especially those ‘90’s New Orleans bands like Acid Bath, EYEHATEGOD, Crowbar, and newer ones like Thou.”
Hyche adds on to the comment about Thou. “I was in 8th grade, Thou had come out with “Algiers” about a year or two before and I heard the first few songs. It definitely planted that seed… once I was in 10th, 11th grade, I started listening to more sludge.”
“The way it translated to our sound, our goal, especially starting out was, ‘How can we make this as loud as possible, and also as fuzzy and, like, bass-heavy as possible?’” Sowers discusses his rig for the tour; he’s using really powerful speakers. “The low end is pushed and it’s super fuzzy. The goal is to have it hit you in the chest and you can feel every note punch you and shake your body when you do it… but then we have these moments that aren’t traditional to sludge, it’s faster and more two-step.”
“It’s really cool how this is coming full-circle,” Hyche says. “Like we said earlier, one of the first bands that got me into this was Thou, and it just got posted that they’re coming through Starkville… they’re one of my favorites and we’re getting to play with them at the end of January.”
“It’s really cool,” remarks Sowers.
“Yeah I’m really excited.”
We discuss the cities for the upcoming tour. They play Springfield Missouri first.
“In October we played with two bands from Springfield, Primitive Rage and Vulgarity… The vocalist from Primitive Rage helped book that show for us,” Hyche says. They’re then playing at The Orphanage in Chicago on January 8th.
“It’s like a concert hall,” says Sowers.
“That’s gonna be, by far, the biggest city we’ve ever played in,” says Hyche.
They next play Indianapolis at Wildfire Tap. Originally, that night was accidentally double-booked.
“Everything was confirmed and then the booking manager hit us up on Instagram and said ‘hey, we saw that you’re promoting this show and we don’t have y’all down for this day, and another band took the spot…’ turns out they forgot to write it down or something like that. We were like ‘god we’re so screwed, can you tell us who booked that show and maybe we can work something out?’ Turns out the bands playing the show are really good friends of ours from Hattiesburg, Silo Kids and Bad Anxiety, who actually played in Starkville not long ago. So we just got added onto that bill and it all worked out really well.” With a few other dates, they’ll be playing with local openers.
Sludgelung is then playing in Cincinnati, and then a show in Murfreesboro.
“It’s at CRX, a house venue, but it’s like a very famous house venue… It’s going to be a fun, smaller, intimate show,” says Hyche.
“Those are our favorite shows, we love small venues,” Sowers adds.
“Yeah, no matter where you are in that place, it’s gonna be blaring loud.”
They then make their return to Starkville. “I don’t think it’s going to be a traditional Sludgelung show… Lishman recorded our last tour and made a documentary of it, and he’s going to premiere it there… I think we may end up doing an acoustic set just for the hell of it… we’ll sell what we have left of the merch… but our true coming-back show will be on the 30th with Thou.”
I ask them if there’s anything else they want to say about their upcoming music or the tour.
“We’ll release at least one single before the start of tour. We’ve played it live in Starkville but it hasn’t been recorded… Besides that, shout-out everybody who has come and supported us, bought merch, kept up with us on Instagram. Shout-out to Josh, who’s not here right now, thank you Lishman. It’s been a journey for sure. This upcoming semester will be the last semester Sludgelung is a band. Just putting on the perspective glasses, we want to make this last semester really worthwhile… We’re really thankful that we’ve made it this far. We never, in a million years, thought that we’d be able to do this,” expresses Hyche.
Sludgelung is going on their Anatomy of the Dog tour this January.
