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High On Fire: Snakes for the divine

15/04/10 || Khlysty

I’m a Matt Pike fanboy through and through. There, I said it. I just love Matt Pike: his guitar style and sound, his endless capacity for riffing, his razor-gargle vocals, his quasi-mystical, quasi-Conan lyrics, his totally metal attitude, his ingenious updating of a sound that seems to start way back in the ‘60s and run through heavy music’s history like a vein full of venom, vinegar and anger. Also, having been graced with the luck of seeing HoF live, I can easily tell you that Matt’s one hell of a performer, full of bravado and fun, and the band’s tighter that a virgin cherry. So, yeah, I like Matt Pike real mucho.

Of course I like HoF’s records, you nimrods. Since Pike’s the driving force for the band, it would’ve been stupid of me not to comprehend the magnificence of the band’s aim, which is to bring back the excitement, sweat and fan into metal, in a way that the only other band I can think of doing such a thing is Motörhead. HoF’s music is the kind of metal that takes the listener to a headspace of pure riffing fury, of blood, guts and glory, of lysergic-induced mania and of ADD-songwriting and performances. Fuck, you like metal, you worship HoF and that’s that.

As you know (if you don’t, what the hell’re you doing here?), HoF peaked musically, compositionally and productionally –please, DO NOT fix the word, that’s how I like it, okay?- with “Blessed Black Wings”. The combination of Pike’s maturing songwriting skills, Joe Preston’s bottom-end majesty and Steve Albini’s wondrous production made that record a must-own for even marginally-interested-in-metal music fans. The band “tinkered” a bit with its sound on “Death Is This Communion”, but still delivered the goods in heaps of molten riffing, even though it tried and generally succeeded in incorporating new, subtler ideas in its crushing, furious sound.

And now, it’s 2010, twelve years after Matt re-imagined hisself from a stoner Sabbath worshiper to a metal hero, and HoF’s back with “Snakes For The Divine”. Were my expectations for this record high? Do catholic priests like to fuck little altar-boys? Damn sure, they were high and, generally speaking, I wasn’t disappointed. I mean, it’s HoF, ferfucksake; it’s Matt Pike. How can you go wrong with it? That said, though, I must admit that I was somewhat underwhelmed by the band’s new endeavor into the worlds of riffitude and heavosity.

See, I’m not an asshole; I don’t expect a band to keep up unfuckwithability for, like, always. I know it’s impossible and I know that the creative process includes peaks and valleys and that the main thing, so as to avoid stagnation and decline, is to keep firm quality control on your material. To that end, HoF is still HoF: huge sound, huge guitars, huge drums, bowel-crushing bottom end, OTT vocals, y’know, the works. In all actuality, I think that 99,9999% of the metal bands out there would just kill to be able to achieve what Matt and his happy cohorts in crime, seemingly effortlessly, do in here.

So, while on the quality front we’re basically A-OK, the problems start when one looks back, and especially when one looks back on “Blessed Black Wings”. You know, I fucking miss the sheer pump-yer-fist-in-the-air, fuck-anyone-looks-you-the-wrong-way exhilaration and excitement I felt while listening to that beast. Not that “Snakes…” is not a worthy successor and another good addition to the legacy of HoF: it’s burly, hairy, ugly as a motherfucker, more aggressive than a saber-tooth and, when it slows down, it’s excruciatingly heavy, while –miracle of miracles!- retaining enough nuance and detail, so as not to lapse into sludgy voids.

But, fuck, it ain’t got “Blessed…” freshness and unbridled, almost overwhelming power. Sure, it’s got great riffs and some neat-o ideas, but lacks surprises. Probably it’s this damn Fidelman guy’s production which keeps me from fully embracing “Snakes…”: his obvious lack of experience with such sounds, in addition to a tendency for “polishing” things up make the songs a bit more tame than they shoulda/coulda been. Add this to the fact that Matt seems to follow a pattern in songwriting here (that is, generally creating galloping moshable parts, interspersed with either a. super-fast or b. slow-stomping ones) and, well, you can see why I’m a bit reluctant to call this a masterpiece and tell you to fuck off my back already.

Anyway, to wrap things up, the songs are longish –the usual HoF 6-to-8 minutes length-, generally contain a couple of different parts and move briskly, even when slow and slothful. Look, I’ll say it again: most metal bands would fuck their moms just to make such a record. But, for me, this is lacking. It’s lacking freshness, it’s lacking power, it’s lacking the fire-breathing bravado of its predecessors. It’s a good HoF record, it’s a damn good metal record, but, Mike, we know that you can do better than that. So, next time, okay?…

Information
Released: 2010
Label: E1 Music
Website: http://highonfire.net
Band
Matt Pike: vocals, guitar
Jeff Matz: bass
Des Kensel: drums

Tracklist
01. Snakes for the divine
02. Frost hammer
03. Bastard samurai
04. Ghost neck
05. The path
06. Fire, flood and plague
07. How dark we pray
08. Holy flames of the firespitter

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