The Tug Fork River Band

No Hope for Man

The Tug Fork River Band might be best known for their song “Ex-Wives,” having put out what some call “the greatest lyric video of all-time.” (It’s readily available on YouTube.) In fact, I remember watching it when it first came out, but shortly thereafter the band faded away.
Out of a desire to “just play metal,” they parted ways with their former label, Wounded, and have self-released their second EP, No Hope for Man. It’s their fourth overall release, with a full-length also preceding it.

Recorded with Brian “Bone” Thornburn at Threshold Studios in Indianapolis — and “funded almost entirely by their Indiegogo campaign, which we are extremely grateful for,” guitarist Justin Foxworth tells me — No Hope for Man starts off great with “To the Wilderness Dead,” the sludge version of Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. It’s got a drawl, and it works incredibly well to set the backwoods tone they’re going for. “No Hope for Man” speeds it back up to metal levels, kicking the EP back into a furious mode.

The vocal growls are wonderful on this record. They start to incorporate some melody halfway through the piece to much less success, but with the slight distortion and pattern decisions made by vocalist Aaron Quinn, the . Overall, it’s a very straight-forward, no non-sense, Southern metal album. When they expand it to a full-release, if they work out their melodic parts and vary the guitar work, they’ll have no problem putting together a rockin’ record.