Athens, Geo.'s Jucifer were cranking out thud-rock for the PBR elite long before most of the current breed of densely fuzzed capital-R-Rock bands were even conceived, a fact that's easy to forget when you look at their recorded output to date. A lot of what Jucifer do is heavy and some of it is pretty metal, but they also have a sludgy alternative element that almost no one pulls off any more. There's a lot of that on If Thine Enemy Hunger, the group's Relapse debut, which sounds as if it was recorded in the mid-90s.
The record's kind of fascinating, really: Jucifer hit the mark so accurately with some of these songs that it almost makes me nostalgic. There's more than a little grunge here, and some of the songs are a little indistinguishable, but considering that most of the sounds on the disc come from one of three sources (guitar, drums, vocals), they manage to squeeze variety in when it counts.
Consider the riot-grunge of "Antietam", which employs, of all things, a banjo in the verses before bursting into crackled-voice, screeching chorus that would make L7 proud. But then they can also stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Melvins on tracks like the album-opening "She Ties the Deep", a seven-plus-minute dirge of punctuated guitar rumbling and sleepy vocals. If you want something a little catchier, on "Pontius of Palia" vocalist Amber Valentine belts out the lines with a sneer but her voice's melodicism belies any contempt. She can sound syrupy sweet or dark and dour depending on the song, either contrasting or blending in with the thick fuzz of the guitar.
If only there were one or two more upbeat numbers here to break up the monotony. The disc's 15 tracks range from mildly energetic to borderline doze-worthy, and pushing a few of the more garage-influenced numbers up another notch or two would help the whole disc. Fifteen songs is a lot, really, especially for a pony with two tricks at most. But whatever; they use those two tricks to pull in a whole mess of grunge-metal influences and turn them into something that's pretty uniquely theirs, so I guess hitting the skip button every now and then isn't the worst thing in the world.
