Jucifer

Emerging from Athens, Georgia’s fresh surge of independent music acts, sludge metal duo Jucifer fashioned a style aligned with R.E.M. no more closely than the New York Dolls stood with Barry Manilow. Shifting between atmospheric passages and frantic punk-metal bursts, the boyfriend-girlfriend duo of Ed Livengood and Amber Valentine began winning over local audiences through their live performances in 1993. Their debut full-length, Calling All Cars on the Vegas Strip, surfaced on the Crack Rock label in 1998 after earning college-radio spins late that year. Strong campus airplay led to a contract with Capricorn Records, which remixed and remastered the album before reissuing it in early 2000. After Capricorn ceased operations shortly thereafter, Velocette Records issued the Lambs EP in 2001, followed by I Name You Destroyer in 2002 and War Bird in 2004. Jucifer then moved to Relapse Records, where they delivered the hard-hitting If Thine Enemy Hunger in 2006 and the genre-shifting double album Autrichienne in 2008. Livengood and Valentine portrayed themselves in Derek Cianfrance’s 2009 drama Metalhead and established their own imprint, Nomadic Fortress Records, the next year. In 2010 the two-piece unveiled their most intense album yet, Throned in Blood.