What's going on with High on Fire?

It's an amazing record. Better than Surrounded By Thieves for one simple reason: Albini. He plays to their strengths, because the drums and guitar are huge, and Pike's purely functional vocals are downplayed somewhat (though they don't disappear entirely, or anything close to it). The songs are uniformly great, with killin' guitar solos (and an album-closing instrumental!). Actually, I'm overly dismissive of Pike's vocals - he sounds pretty good, still very Lemmy-esque but with more blood in his throat. Most of the tracks here almost sound like mid-90s Motörhead (think the song "Sacrifice," but noisier, and you've pretty much got it). There are some nice slowed-down bits at the beginning and end of songs, but for the most part it's headlong bash bash bash all the way through. And the drums are fucking enormous.

They played four new songs at the show I saw, but they also played "Baghdad." Great set. Ferociously loud.

I gotta say I don't really hear what Preston adds to the band. Part of that is knowing that the guitar and the drums are the really crucial sounds in HOF, and part of it is knowing that the Melvins are wildly, ludicrously overrated, but really, Preston is "just the bassist" here, adding name value for a few dozen and nothing as far as anybody else should be concerned.

Some PR waffle:

HIGH ON FIRE has announced the details for their first North American headlining tour in support of their highly-anticipated new album Death Is This Communion. Death Is This Communion will see its North American release on September 18.

The “Death Is This Communion North American Tour” kicks off on September 20 in San Diego, CA and will travel across North America for five weeks. Joining HIGH ON FIRE for the entirety of the tour are special guests MONO, PANTHERS, and COLISEUM. The tour is being sponsored in part by Decibel Magazine, Jaxprints, and Fixion Media. A complete listing of tour cities and venues can be found below.

Advance online ticket pre-sales for this tour will become available Friday, June 15 through DucatKing.com, with tickets opening up through all other standard outlets on Friday, June 22. Ducat King is a fan-friendly concert ticketing company dedicated to offering lower service charges and eliminating handling fees to the ticket buyer.

HIGH ON FIRE recently completed recording Death Is This Communion in Seattle, WA with producer Jack Endino.

Best news I've heard all week! Thanks Ned.

They're in my part of the world about a fortnight before this so WE get first wind of the new shit. Do this kids still say "w00t"?

Should be good. Assuming this will be on Relapse?

Yep

So what are the dates?

September 20 San Diego, CA Casbah

September 21 Los Angeles, CA El Ray

September 22 Tempe, AZ Clubhouse

September 23 Albuquerque, NM Launch Pad

September 25 San Antonio, TX White Rabbit

September 26 Dallas, TX Granada Theater

September 27 Austin, TX Emo’s

September 28 Houston, TX Meridian Red Room

September 29 New Orleans, LA One Eyed Jacks

October 1 Knoxville, TN Blue Cats

October 2 Athens, GA 40 Watt Club

October 3 Asheville, NC Orange Peel

October 4 Wilmington, NC Soapbox

October 5 Richmond, VA Toad’s Place

October 6 Baltimore, MD Rams Head Live

October 7 Philadelphia, PA Theater of Living Arts

October 8 New York, NY Webster Hall

October 11 Cambridge, MA Middle East

October 12 Providence, RI Living Room

October 13 Montreal, QC Les Saints

October 14 Toronto, ON Opera House

October 16 Buffalo, NY Showplace Theater

October 17 Cleveland, OH Grog Shop

October 18 Detroit, MI Magic Stick

October 19 Chicago, IL Double Door

October 20 Madison, WI High Noon Saloon

October 21 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue

October 24 Vancouver, BC Richards on Richards

October 25 Seattle, WA Crocodile Café

October 26 Portland, OR Mt. Tabor

October 28 San Francisco, CA Independent

October 29 San Francisco, CA Independent

BBW is going to be hard to follow, but I cant wait for this. I love these guys.

is preston on the new album/tour?

Preston's long gone (he can't stay in any band for more than 12 months, it would seem). The new bass player is Jeff Matz from Zeke, who was already touring with them at this time last year. I did see them twice on the UK tour with Preston on bass and it was an awesome thing to behold - as my mate pointed out at one point during the set - "he's playing that bass like a piano" (sounds better in a Scouse accent).

UK/Europe tour dates announced; UK dates are with Russian Circles:

September 1 Birmingham, UK The Barfly

September 2 Glasgow, UK Nice N' Sleazy

September 3 Manchester, UK Jabez Clegg

September 4 Bristol, UK The Cooler

September 6 London, UK Underworld

September 7 Paris, France Gibus

September 8 Antwerp, Belgium Trix Club

September 9 Dortmund, Germany FZW

September 10 Berlin, Germany Bastard

September 11 Tilburg, Netherlands 013

And a new track, "Rumours of War," is up:

http://www.myspace.com/HighOnFireSlays

"RumOURS"? Pike's an anglophile now?

New album is good

Very possibly great. Time will tell.

Best yet. (even) More consistent than BBW.

listening to Art of Self Defense tonight, haven't heard it in ages...underpraised album! gonna go see 'em tomorrow, fuck yeah - I haven't seen them since...well...the Art of Self Defense tour

Probably the most retarded (for the listener)/insane live band I've ever seen in terms of sheer musical force....just awesome. The volume they play at should not even be legal.

John OTM. Much as I've loved everything since, they still haven't topped the debut. More groove and variety, plus killer songs. And, yeah, one of the very best live bands I've seen in the last half decade.

Art of Self Defense just fucking crushes. The bass intro to "Fireface", goddamn.

That's the only HoF album I don't own and haven't heard. I need to rectify that.

Big time, you won't be disappointed.

Fireface, hell yeah. And 10,000 Years might be the best thing they've done yet.

Last, Bagdhad, the Celtic Frost cover. We could go on.

Awesome album

Going to see them tonight for the second time. Hopefully I'll remember it this time. Fuck yeah.

Last night we listened again to "Death is this communion" for the first time in a lot of time and it is really really good. A couple of songs are just immense.

Some PR news:

---

HIGH ON FIRE SET TO BEGIN WORK ON NEW ALBUM

World-renowned power trio HIGH ON FIRE will begin work on its long-awaited, fifth studio album and follow-up to 2007’s Death is This Communion this August. The esteemed band will commence pre-production in Los Angeles with producer Greg Fidelman (Metallica, Slayer, Johnny Cash) and the goal of capturing “the ultimate High on Fire experience.”

The new HIGH ON FIRE album is slated for an early 2010 release. When asked for comment, Pike states, “We look forward to sharing the dark seas of our new riffs and tragic stories. Soon the next saga of High on Fire's world will be known.”

All reports indicate the new HIGH ON FIRE material to be “heavier, louder and more intricate.” Prior to entering the studio, the Oakland-based band will embark on a string of California live dates set to kick off on August 7 in Eureka, CA. The group is expected to preview some of its new material live for the very first time at these shows.

HIGH ON FIRE tour dates:
(all dates include support from Early Man)

August 7 Eureka, CA Noctumum
August 8 Sacramento, CA Harlows
August 10 Fresno, CA Starline
August 11 Modesto, CA Fat Cat
August 12 Long Beach, CA Alex's Bar
August 15 San Diego, CA Casbah (w/ Earthless)

--

That San Diego show = holy shit. But I'll be in Carmel, so alas.

Yeah that San Diego show sounds awesome. Too bad its, y'know, in San Diego. But very very glad to hear they are diving into a new album.

all their albums are awesome

New riffs AND tragic stories. I wuv that bruv.

fuck yes

http://action-pr.com/uploads/art/203/HIGH%20ON%20FIRE_Snakes_for_the_Divine_album_cover.jpg

DAMMIT I was literally about to post that.

holy fucking frank frazetta!

is that the same dude that did molly hatchett covers?

wow

yeah, he put the death dealer on their debut album. and i think something on their second one too?

anyways guessing arik moonhawk did snakes for the divine like the others? dude rules

oh god that is perfect

That is indeed Arik Moonhawk with another awesome D20+10 roll.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOO

if it were frazetta there'd be more ass and butt dimples btw dudes

did anybody see those frazetta comic books last year

Not on Relapse?

Same guy that did this cover?

http://www.recordsale.org/cdpix/s/shrinebuilder-shrinebuilder.jpg

Same color tones, lots of snakes...

I don't see it in the first couple pages of his gallery but he's done tons of album covers

Carcosa is my fav from that one

also sick as hell. no track on this one that doesn't hit imo.

the only song i've encounteredthat i haven't been totally sure about is "warhorn" but 1) i can dig that it's different 2) i think it's mostly successful and 3) it's grown on me

other favs are "the pallid mask" and "drowning dog" (such a gut-wrencher) from em and "fertile green" and "madness of an architect" from de vermiis

"king of days" too

i've listened to these so much that there isn't a track that hasn't been a favorite tbh

still caning these guys lol.

i even got into luminiferous though it's obviously not quite as great as some of the others.

Some friends of mine are making a stink about Matt Pike coming off a conspiracy-minded crank here:

https://thequietus.com/articles/31016-matt-pike-interview

Which he is! But I was expecting much, much worse, unless I missed something major, which is possible, because he is so cranky I kind of skimmed.

Not really surprised either, hasn't he been going on about David Icke and lizard people for decades now?

I definitely remember Pike mentioning Icke in an interview I read years ago. The only musician I've ever had bring the reptoids up to me in an interview was Wino, who's now an anti-vax crank, so.

From what I've read in interviews with Pike and from my one, extremely drunken on his part, conversation with the guy, he seems more to just be into the lizard people conspiracy thing from a "this is batshit sci-fi fodder for kick-ass metal songs", I haven't gotten the sense that it's too engrained but I could be wrong.

I picked up an Icke book from a charity shop last year thinking I'd find out what his thing was. It's still sitting in a pile unread beside he toilet.
THought it be some interest. I dunno.

Like seeing how glaring the holes were or something

Oh there was definitely a time in my life I would have checked one of his books out from sheer curiosity, had I been aware enough to care.

Doing some googling, yeah, it's def. a weird purgatory of repurposing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a lizard people parable drawn from life, but the lizards are not, Icke insists, not Jews, just all powerful Zionists who *happen* to be actual, real space lizards.

I dunno, I didn't waste any more time on him. Pike, it's hard to tell what's up with Pike, though if you told me he believed or believed in literally anything it wouldn't come as a shock. Iirc the dude is even anti-earplug.

No interest in defending the guy, especially if there's more questionable beliefs of his I haven't stumbled across before, but he always struck me more as the old fashioned aliens and Illuminati corner bar type conspiracy theorist than the more dangerous, anti-vax, Q adjacent always online modern type conspiracy theorist.

Very contrarian "I would never belong to any club that would have me as a member" vibe.

he seems more to just be into the lizard people conspiracy thing from a "this is batshit sci-fi fodder for kick-ass metal songs", I haven't gotten the sense that it's too engrained but I could be wrong.

The line between aliens and Illuminati and Q has gotten thinner over time - the kooks were never quite as harmlessly goofy as we wanted to believe.

I think they were slightly more harmless before they were able to congregate online and stoke each others batshit.

a friend posted about this interview on FB with the "anarchist libertarian" bit, and I was like, "uh, I wonder if he's still in Oakland?" and then I skimmed the interview and lol of course he moved to Portland

Matt Pike seems like the sort of dude who lives wherever he wakes up. Did you see that thing about his amputated toe?

No surprise, the new song is pretty rad, but cliche or not it concerns me a little that Pike would name the album and song "Cometh the Storm." Given his predilections, he's the last guy I'd want talking about a coming storm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVr9AU9gMfo