Jucifer

Rising out of a new wave of independent music from Athens, Georgia, sludge metal duo Jucifer produced a sound that resembled R.E.M. about as much as the New York Dolls resembled Barry Manilow. Alternating between atmospherics and frantic punk metal, the boyfriend-girlfriend team of Ed Livengood and Amber Valentine began impressing locals with their performing skills in 1993. Their first album, Calling All Cars on the Vegas Strip, began getting airplay at the end of 1998 and was released that same year by the Crack Rock record label. Its prodigious success on college radio got them a deal with Capricorn Records, who remastered and remixed the album, re-releasing it in early 2000. Capricorn officially went out of business soon afterwards, and Velocette Records released 2001’s Lambs EP, 2002’s I Name You Destroyer, and 2004’s War Bird. Jucifer signed to Relapse Records for their hard-hitting, 2006 record If Thine Enemy Hunger and their genre-shifting double album Autrichienne, which was released in 2008. In 2009, Livengood and Valentine starred in a drama by Derek Cianfrance titled Metalhead, playing themselves in the film, and then went on to found their own label, Nomadic Fortress Records, the following year. In 2010, the two-piece released their heaviest record to date, Throned in Blood.