If you’re looking for top-end position players in metal, then High On Fire are your guys. They’re kind of one of the stoner-metal bands now, without the concessions that’d ultimately grow them in the vein of Mastodon. (And no shade on Mastodon, either; they’d arguably reach their best through tightening and condensing their approach.) A 25-year career—or more, if you consider Matt Pike’s legacy with Sleep—hasn’t percolated too much into the wider world, nor has 2018 Grammy win that’s such an obvious foot in the door to bring the potential normie converts to them.
Instead, High On Fire’s consistency has been its own reward. They always deliver, and have the freedom to drill down as deeply into their dank, murky little corner of metal as they see fit. It’s the benefit of holding your own so steadfastly, with little interesting in deviation or (especially) bending over backwards. So why don’t you have a guess at what album number nine Cometh The Storm is like? If you said ‘a High On Fire album, largely keeping their string of quality up’, congratulations—a winner is you.
Yeah, it’s not surprising, is it? Perhaps there might have been some grander expectations following 2018’s Electric Messiah—the five-year gap; that album’s Grammy-winning status; the fact it was a tribute to Motörhead’s Lemmy for some upped reverence—but doubling down like that feels a bit antithetical to who High On Fire are. Big, slow, punishing-like-the-heat-of-the-desert-sun riffs don’t require airs and graces to utterly wreck, after all. Anyway, it’s not like Cometh The Storm is entirely devoid of new tricks or recognisable factors. The Middle Eastern influence has been pushed quite a bit this time, albeit only really showing up on the bridge of Lambsbread and the instrumental track Karanlik Yol. Even so, though, it’s incredibly well done, with all the hazy textures and layers that combine with High On Fire’s creeping, portentous dread, to feel like a considerable melding of styles rather than one displacing the other.
Besides that, deviations on Cometh The Storm are more variations on a theme. The clacking, maniacal death ‘n’ roll of The Beating and the groove-heavy Hunting Shadows both read as natural extrapolations of the norm, particularly the former in its Motörheadiness. That’s also about as far as High On Fire need to go, however. They still sound great from their core angle, produced by Kurt Ballou again as the cheat code for heavy music of this stripe, and refusing to dial it back. It’s still remarkable that music this guttural and quaking comes from a trio, of which new drummer Coady Willis (of the Melvins, Big Business and other reputable noiseniks) fits in and contributes perfectly.
Still, it’s hard to beat Matt Pike up front. For an album about the encroaching apocalypse, frontmen don’t come much more suitable, between being the riffsmith extraordinaire responsible for the planet-swallowing dread of Burning Down or Darker Fleece, and a vocalist who sounds like he’s trying to carve his image from a block of granite using nothing but his own larynx. He’s got these howls and roars going on for days, with age accentuating the cragginess and worn-back exterior that’s all too perfect for High On Fire. Even on a song like Tough Guy where his ‘higher’ register (I think that’s what it’s supposed to be) manifests as a gargling little gremlin voice, it still fits the overall visage of malevolence, in a weird sort of way. It’s the purest form of entertainment value that High On Fire will deliver here, if nothing else.
That’s not to say there’s nothing good about Cometh The Storm; more accurately, High On Fire aren’t a band you come to to be ‘entertained’, in the strictest sense. It’s more an experience, in the subsuming size and weight of what they produce that draws you in with little hope of escape. Perhaps that’s how they’ve gotten this far; it would certainly make sense. After all, Cometh The Storm presents little reason to be wary of High On Fire sticking to their current path, seeing as they’re still on blazing form and domineering presence. It’s a simple existence, really—they know what’s expected of them; they pull it off in spectacular form; and they continue to reap the plaudits they so richly deserve. See you in a few years for another one, then, eh?
For fans of: Mastodon, Kylesa, YOB
‘Cometh The Storm’ by High On Fire is released on 19th April on MNRK Heavy.
Words by Luke Nuttall
You lost me at calling them Stoner Metal. Yikes, they’re so much better than that