High on Fire - The Electric Messiahs

In a musical world where pure, hard rock was becoming increasingly rare, a band was born straddling stoner-metal and sludge that created a devastating sound, aiming for power and intensity with unshakeable determination, becoming the worthy heir, at least in spirit, to Motorhead

by Antonio Silvestri

At the end of the the Nineties an important part of the music scene hard'n'heavy presents itself as an aesthetic territory that's easier to flee than to stay in. The most common path is that of contamination and crossover, often drawing from fields foreign to hard'n'heavy tout court. Stoner-metal has already given us its foundational masterpieces, and the albums that built on the insights of those works, so the choice is often ruthless: wind down and move on to something else, like the Kyuss, or open up to other contaminations.

Staying, instead, fully faithful to a sound, and to a culture, with deep roots in rock tradition hard'n'heavy is a path taken by few, and often with modest results. Too often the component bluesdisappears, and thus a more emotional and seventies-styleone, other times the ability to craft memorable songs is lost, leaving only faded copies of one's own idols. For many bands that have remained active, a phase of natural creative decline sets in, followed by an increasingly aging audience.

One of the most significant exceptions is High On Fire, who established themselves in the first quarter of this century as a rare and unique example of credible heirs to the ultra-rock'n'roll soul of Motorhead in general and Lemmy Kilmister in particular, reimagined in light of the hardest, heaviest rock of the Nineties. Against the more cerebral approaches of many of their peers, and the pop hooks of just as many others, High On Fire set a discography of deafening music that draws, depending on the moment, on stoner-metal, sludge, thrash-metal and speed-metal, in a constant quest for songs that are ever more powerful, majestic, ferocious and muscular. Their points of reference may be the same as many others', from Black Sabbath on down, but theirs is a colossal synthesis that, on top of it all, squares the sheer sonic power. This dirty, vicious music has become, album after album, an occasion to immerse oneself head to toe in the wildest spirit of rock'n'roll, without bowing (almost ever) to a more accessible melodic component that might also win over post-grunge orphans.

The Awakening: Self-Defense and Thieves

highonfirecorpo1_01 High On Fire were formed in 1998 as a trio made up of Sleep guitarist Sleep Matt Pike, who also handled vocals, drummer Des Kensel and bassist George Rice. While Pike is the best known of the three, thanks to his fundamental contribution to an album like “Jerusalem” (1999), the real secret weapon is Kensel, a drummer who is at once imaginative and earth-shattering, able to act as the propulsive force behind the songs and steer their development with a mastery that sometimes ends up overshadowing even the central role of the guitars. His rhythmic solutions are often marked by tribal percussion and relentless speed, but over the course of the band's discography Kensel will prove to be considerably more eclectic than the early High On Fire releases might suggest.

The aforementioned Pike brings to High On Fire a guitar style that fuses Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix, Melvins and Metallica, and which, especially after the early albums, often finds its most direct inspiration in a Motorhead filtered through an almost obsessive attempt to sound like their quintessence. This affinity with the band behind “Ace Of Spades” is even more evident in the vocals, which, after a more typically stoner-sludge start, later veer toward a possessed version of Lemmy Kilmister.

Given the band's approach, which is often more a matter of sheer sonic power than of innovation or compositional flair, producers have played a central role in High On Fire's career, tasked with the thorny job of channeling the trio's dynamite force into our eardrums. A substantial part of the differences between one album and another can be traced directly to changes in studio personnel.

In 1999 the band recorded a three-song EP, later folded into their debut The Art Of Self Defense (2000), released by Man's Ruin and produced by Billy Anderson. The mere six tracks on offer are already a concentrate of raw power, starting with opener “Baghdad”, a jagged stoner-metal cannon shot broken up by a long guitar solo. The almost eight minutes of “10,000 Years” revive the spirit of Kyuss, including in its long tail of deafening psychedelia. “Blood From Zion” is all about sheer intensity, while “Last” slows down just enough to expand the guitar palette into an acidic, deafening blues, with Kensel showing off his flair for the first time.

“Fireface”, another extended track that this time runs past eight and a half minutes, opens by grinding out a mournful riffs, then doubles its speed and, amid cyclically repeating rhythmic machine-gun bursts, builds toward a long guitar solo that anticipates a doom-paced slowdown at the end. The grand finale is entrusted to “Master Of Fists”, over ten minutes opened by a riffs that couldn't be more Black Sabbath; the arrangement eases up just slightly to make room for a lyrical first solo of distorted guitar, but before the fourth minute Pike sinks his teeth into the mic, spitting out the lyrics with sheer ferocity; by the sixth minute the rhythm shifts, the song falls into a hammering, panzer-like march and the atmosphere turns suffocating, with acidic fumes reflected in the vocal reverb; the ending, somewhat disappointing, dissipates the energy into one last, relatively weak explosion, unworthy of the deafening carnage of the preceding ten minutes.

The second album Surrounded By Thieves (2002), for Relapse and once again produced by Billy Anderson, has the thankless task of turning the debut's raw power into something more, so the band doesn't simply swell the ranks of Black Sabbath and stoner-metal fans who took their cues (mostly) from them. It's the last album to feature bassist George Rice.

This time the tracks are generally shorter, yet even more powerful and faster: in three fewer minutes they offer eight songs instead of six.

The menacing subsonic rumble that opens “Eyes And Teeth” showcases at its best an album that builds extremely tense structures only to then indulge in spectacular detonations, in this specific case restarting halfway through to launch into a swirling guitar solo. When Kensel is especially on form, as in the devastating “Hung, Drawn And Quartered” with its tireless whirlwind of drumming, the band reaches new peaks of intensity, with Pike sounding positively possessed.

The venomous, deafening sound is the central element of both “Speedwolf” and “The Yeti”, but, even within the album's overall homogeneity, the fast and menacing “Nemesis”, once again thanks to a tentacular Kensel, carves out a dimension all its own.

The lengthy “Thraft Of Caanan”, notable for its less linear development, is a sludge-stoner epic that contrasts with the more direct title track, another great showcase for Kensel. The closer, “Razor Hoof”, fittingly stands out for its ultra-distorted, compressed charge with the drums front and center.

Surrounded By Thieves continues a path of synthesis and refinement, forming with the debut an opening-career diptych that will sound especially satisfying to anyone who holds dear the raw, rough-hewn sounds of certain 1980s and 1990s rock and metal.

Steve Albini's Blessing

Blessed Black Wings (2005) brings two major changes: Joe Preston of Melvins on bass and, above all, Steve Albini on production. It's also their most overtly Lovecraft-inspired album, drawing its opening cues from the writer's stories in “The Face Of Oblivion” and “Cometh Down Hessian”.

The intensity of the early albums is surpassed by the...opener "Devilution", a tribal whirlwind over which a thrash-punk furious, sung with foam at the mouth. The aforementioned “The Face Of Oblivion”, however, also shows greater complexity in the songwriting, less linear: tense interludes, a blues solo, a gloomy section split between electric and acoustic, and a more restrained vocal finale make it a strange declination of the prog-metal steeped in cosmic horror.

Il sound armored sound has gained greater depth and detail, so much so that new melodic details stand out ("Brother In The Wind") alongside wild rides made even more frightening by certain theatrical touches (the echo on the vocals in "Cometh Down Hessian").

It still remains material for particularly well-trained eardrums, as confirmed by the nearly eight minutes of "Blessed Black Wings", with an... riffs opening worthy of the... Slayer and an obsessive intensity especially in the finale, and "Silver Back", the...hardcore punk bastardized by extreme metal.

What also emerges, though, is a band that wants to put its power at the service of more ambitious and creative tracks, such as: the frenzied dance of “To Cross The Bridge”, driven by a folk cell and then launched into a swirling amalgam of power that brushes past solutions typical of much metal the Eighties closing with an annihilating wall of distortion; “Songs Of Thunder”, a suite instrumental that recalls the eclecticism of the... Celtic Frost building a... climax dramatic, propelled by the usual tribal, tentacular Kensel but also by the guitars, which cover everything from semi-acoustic to deafening solutions.

With this third album, High On Fire establish themselves as a band equally capable of working on atmosphere as on sheer power, helped by a new narrative depth to their songs, at times recalling the spirit of prog-metal or at least the most ambitious strands of metal.

Their literary inspirations widen from Lovecraft to David Icke, the famous proponent of the reptilian conspiracy theory, and to the Bible on Death Is This Communion (2007), produced by Jack Endino and featuring Jeff Matz on bass. While the sound has become somewhat less frightening in terms of impact and dynamics, the kinship with Motorhead becomes more evident right from opener “Fury Whip”, especially in Pike's vocal delivery.

Tracks with elaborate developments return, such as “Waste Of Tiamat” and “Cyclopian Scape”, alongside a few brief oddities outside the usual hard'n'heavy canon (“Khanrad's Wall” is folk-metal; “Head Hunter” is a drum solo), but it's in “Death Is This Communion”, a full eight and a half minutes, that they find a new classic for their discography: the new sludge-metal epic takes on mystical, hallucinatory tones, with Pike going as far as whispering some lines as if seized by visions.

Without a sound as overwhelming as that of the third album, and with repetitiveness starting to creep in, the album is remembered above all for the moments when High On Fire seek new directions without betraying their past too much, as in the epic, melancholy instrumental “DII”, comparable to the more melodic side of Earth, and in the spectacular “Ethereal”, which opens with a duel between drums and guitar before turning into a menacing metallic colossus over which Pike sings in a desperate tone, vibrant with drama.

Another cycle effectively comes to a close here, because the band is now ever more explicitly searching for a change that might breathe fresh life into their sound.

Snakes, Worms and Kurt Ballou

Snakes For The Divine (2010), produced by veteran Greg Fidelman (Metallica, Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bush, Audioslave, Marilyn Manson, Slayer and System Of A Down) and once again shot through with an interest in reptilian conspiracy theories, tries to transform the impetuous violence of their early years into something more atmospheric and melodic, working on the arrangements and easing off the volume somewhat.

“Snakes For The Divine” opens with an almost power-metal riffs, blended with the stoner-sludge soul we already know. The dynamic is similar in the thrash-stoner-sludge of “Frost Hammer”, until the melody forcefully breaks off into a lulling refrain, and in the ride between Motorhead and Sepultura that is “Fire, Flood & Plague”; this is the least devastating dimension of their sound, where melodies are played at towering volumes, as in the lengthy “Bastard Samurai”.

The fury returns with stoner-hardcore worthy of the most possessed Boris on “Ghost Neck”, sharply contrasting with the melodic, deafening “How Dark We Pray”, unfolding in an apocalyptic atmosphere and scratched by a long bluesy solo.

The new course, then, is to inject a few doses of novelty into a well-oiled formula, relying mainly on Pike's dexterity on guitar and Kensel's on drums.

Their sixth album, De Vermis Mysteriis (2012), rests on a loose concept about time travel and makes use of the production of Kurt Ballou, member of Converge, destined to become a key figure in the second half of the band's career.

A monstrous version of Motorhead on “Serums Of Liao”, with Kensel building a war dance within the sonic storm, and the slightly slower “Bloody Knuckles”, a classic stoner-thrash-metal piece of theirs, set up the eardrum-shattering single “Fertile Green”, a hammering thrash-metal track sung with blind fury.

The atmospheric midtempo pieces for distorted guitar, the lulling, melodic “Samsara” and the more melancholy, solemn and tragic “King Of Days”, serve to momentarily break up what would otherwise be a monolithic assault. The closer “Warhorn” is instead a trojan horse: it seems like one of the atmospheric tracks, but it hides explosions where a terrifying wall of distortion rises up.

Sonic assaults like the stoner-thrash of “Spiritual Rites” or the rotten sludge-metal of “De Vermis Mysteriis” are electrifying even for those well versed in these sonic territories, the result of nearly fifteen years spent refining the wickedness of their sound.

The affinity with Kurt Ballou continues on Luminiferous (2015), another spin on the carousel between an obsessive Motorhead, deafening stoner-sludge-thrash-metal and the whole bag of tricks acquired through experience. If true novelty is scarce, the alternation between ferocious, deafening tracks and more atmospheric ones still keeps the listen sufficiently varied and enjoyable, at least for those always on the hunt for muddy, filthy, cursed music.

The fast “The Black Pot” lights the fuse so the tracklist can continue through other armored, steady-paced songs, like the relatively melodic “The Falconist”, alternating with a few particularly frantic moments, like “Slave The Hive”.

The thrilling “The Cave” also employs psychedelic guitars and a filtered vocal in the style of “Planet Caravan”, breaking into sections like a progressive track and swaying menacingly through a high-decibel midtempo. The title track, opened by a Kensel in full berserk mode, is one of the most devastating songs of their entire career and, by extension, one of the most devastating in all of contemporary metal.

The closing “The Lethal Chamber” perhaps stretches things a bit too far over its nine minutes, but the terms were surely clear from the outset: this is music meant to pummel your eardrums, harsh and deafening.

Worshipping the Electric Messiah

highonfirecorpo4 Partly due to a lack of serious competition, High On Fire in the 2010s steadily gained ground with critics, as standard-bearers for a now nearly extinct way of understanding hard'n'heavy. Crowning this role comes the Lemmy Kilmister tribute album, Electric Messiah (2018), hailed by many as the masterpiece of their career, or at the very least the album that brings a now two-decade-long journey to fruition.

The intensity of “Spewn From The Earth” introduces a tracklist overflowing with their steroid-fueled rock'n'roll, a cannon shot in which the band plays as a tight unit, delivering furious energy and a rough, powerful sound to the listener. The slower “Steps Of The Ziggurat/ House Of Enlil”, running over nine minutes, makes use of menacing midtempo passages and swirling drum acrobatics to inject the music with tension, while the guitars act mostly as brute force.

It's with “Electric Messiah” that the band outdoes itself, launched at breakneck speed into a frenzied “Bomber”, a caustic take on Motorhead and an epic hymn to Lemmy Kilmister, with Pike at his peak as a werewolf-zombie frontman and Kensel once again proving unstoppable.

All give praise as the ace hits the stage

All are amazed at the cards that he played

My homage paid to the king in his grave

He's playing bass & he's melting your face

All give praise as the ace hits the stage

All are amazed at the cards that he played

The ten and a half minutes of “Sanctioned Annihilation”, with death-metal leanings in the guitar and a war dance standing in for a conventional groove, show just how theatrical the band has unexpectedly become, with a sense of tension worthy of the greats of hard rock.

Armored rock'n'roll numbers, like the lightning-fast “Freebooter” and above all “The Pallid Mask”, with Pike transfigured into a monstrous howl and the instruments pounding away murkily, are by now their bread and butter. That they can still build around it a grotesque carousel of war percussion, infernal screams, somber progressions and dramatic solos, as on “God Of The Godless”, remains surprising nonetheless, a slap in the face to anyone who'd assume music this dirty and nasty must automatically lack invention: at every turn, High On Fire find a way to rekindle the energy, stoke the tension, and sink their teeth into the eardrums of the distracted listener.

The moment they push harder on both speed and ferocity, on the closing “Drowning Dog”, Pike reveals himself as a more expressive guitarist than ever, even refined in the riffs that opens it.

The Perfect Storm

highonfirecorpo5 In 2019 Des Kensel left the band, replaced by Coady Willis of Big Business, himself not coincidentally a former Melvins member. Curiously, the change comes just a few months after the band won the Grammy for “Best Metal Performance”, the most mainstream recognition in the group's history. In fact, High On Fire scaled back their activity in the period that followed, aside from contributing to the tribute album Löve Me Förever: A Tribute To Motörhead (2022)

Cometh The Storm (2024) is a long-awaited return in album form, one that tries to speak to the present, amid conflicts threatening nuclear catastrophe and all-too-recent pandemics. In terms of sound and songwriting, it serves up the same dirty, nasty music as ever, played at deafening volumes and once again produced by Kurt Ballou. That said, Pike is more expressive than ever in his hyperkinetic, lycanthropic style, while newcomer Willis manages to make Kensel's absence sting far less, stepping in at every opportunity to rekindle the songs' energy, thicken the wall of sound and underscore the shifts in speed, atmosphere and intensity.

The opener “Lambsbread” is once again a hybrid of Melvins and Motorhead, with an unexpected touch of Middle Eastern music. After adding another classic stoner-sludge number to their discography (“Burning Down”), High On Fire raise the stakes on the furious, devilish “Trismegistus”, with Pike possessed and Willis relentless in building a stoner-metal track with a wicked, punk attitude. The title track opens the door to new compositional elements, with a tense introduction before the usual catastrophic distortions, and with the vocal melody veering into darker territory.

Cometh The Storm is, by their standards, an album striking for how much it seeks atmosphere over sheer power alone, propelled by an overwhelming vocal performance, a brutal solo worthy of Kerry King, and a thermonuclear coda, in which Ballou's experience with the band once again proves essential.

After an interlude of Turkish music, a rather different way of catching their breath, the second half of the album also rediscovers their rock'n'roll soul with “The Beating”, where Lemmy and co. seem to return in full berserk mode.

After a few shorter, still remarkably intense tracks, “Hunting Shadows” recovers melody, even as it armors it in distortion. But it's “Darker Fleece”, over its ten minutes, that makes the real difference: if the compressed electric-guitar lament at the start brings Sleep back to life, the menacing midtempo that follows is the quintessence of stoner-sludge-doom sonic power, a sound so dense that even Pike's solos take a back seat to the war dance set up by Willis; in the final stretch a monstrous slowdown leads into an asphyxiating, catacomb-like doom, yet another masterful extreme take on Black Sabbath.

If the novelties, in the form of non-Western musical insertions, are more curiosities than anything else, Cometh The Storm is recommended for anyone who, even in 2024, still hungers for distorted guitars and power and wants to take it all in at deafening volumes. Steering clear of intellectual reinterpretations and contaminations that dilute the original material far too much, High On Fire confirm themselves as unshakeable champions of an extreme way of understanding hard'n'heavy, more precious today than at their debut, because by now it's rare. Of this dark cult, whose electric messiah is Lemmy Kilmister, they are dirty, wicked cardinals.

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition

High on Fire on OndaRock

Discography

The Art Of Self Defense (Man's Ruin, 2000)
Surrounded By Thieves (Relapse, 2002)
Blessed Black Wings (Relapse, 2005)
Death Is This Communion (Relapse, 2007)
Snakes For The Divine (E1 Music, 2010)
De Vermis Mysteriis (E1 Music, 2012)
Luminiferous (E1 Music, 2015)
Electric Messiah (E1 Music, 2018)
Cometh The Storm (MNRK, 2024)