What's going on with High on Fire?

I don't know if it's just me but Art/Surrounded/BBW sound like a triptych and they changed their sound a little bit after that and got more like... i don't know how to describe it, but more metallic in a different way? more riffs that sounded like they were descended from thrash? am i crazy?

nah, yr right, they totally did. the riffs from mid to late career really hit you in the fuckin' face, which is why I know lots of people who aren't into the whole doom/stoner aesthetic love them.

i'm listening to electric messiah and de vermis mysteriis like all the time practically. the sound that they shifted to, is that in a thrash vein? i'd love to check out more metal that sounds like this. i know reign in blood but never really spent any other slayer or classic metallica or megadeth. basically i just want to find more stuff that has a similar aura of all-consuming violence and machismo with like mythical overtones and more chromatic / jarring riffs along with more melodic stuff.

there are thrash elements in it, increasingly so over the years, but it's not full-on thrash. which is kind of what makes it neat, it's a very thick gumbo of sludge/stoner, and Pike's favorite elements from other genres like thrash, maybe occasional death.

trying to think of other stuff in this vein....uhh.....hmm. was gonna say Junior Bruce but they steal a wee bit too much from HoF for me to put them in the same league. have to think on it a bit!

You would probably like Power Trip, and you might like Lair of the Minotaur.

good call on Power Trip

ty

Power Trip is PERFECT

lair of the minotaur might be even more perfect. THANK YOU. sorry i was rude to you on that other thread unperson.

discogs brought up nile - loving the sound of "vile nilotic rites", might fuck with that too

good album, pretty much comfort food Nile. possibly seek out the songs "Kafir", "Black Seeds of Vengeance", or "Barra Edinazzu" (each from diff albums" as well.

thumbs up. digging into mastodon too.

if you want heavier Mastodon, Remission and Leviathan are the more primitive punch you in the mouth albums, though I like almost all of their eras.

remission would definitely fit that bill

early baroness too esp the 1st 2 sludgey EPs

Power, machismo, mythical overtones: clearly you need some Manowar.

i've got a playlist now with power trip's nightmare logic, lair of the minotaur's war metal battle master (great title), mastodon's remission and emperor of sand and the two aforementioned high on fire albums.

first impressions:

power trip basically wants to sound like reign in blood, which is cool. singer obviously came up through post-hardcore but everything else screams rick rubin producing slayer in 1986.

lair of the minotaur album is pretty fun, very impassioned, i dig the vocal style switch-ups, but is a little clumsy and amateur. i bet they're a lot of fun live.

the mastodon albums i'll probably spend some more time with. i think i like the sound and 80s metal / progressive rock feel of emperor of sand more than remission which sounds a little more like post-hardcore to me. they're definitely more of a progressive rock / post-hardcore band with metal elements blended in. the drummer is a little too busy for my taste. i never really jibed with this kind of prog sound so idk about these guys yet though there are some undeniably cool songs.

as far as high on fire goes, hearing these other bands kind of underscores how excellent they are imo.

a very thick gumbo of sludge/stoner

lair of the minotaur album is pretty fun, very impassioned, i dig the vocal style switch-ups, but is a little clumsy and amateur. i bet they're a lot of fun live.

hahahah i mean, you should listen to 7000 Dying Rats (dude's former band) ... it's more "funny" than minotaur. I vaguely remember a friend of mine touring with them as the drummer at one point

If concerts ever come back, HoF are one of the best live bands I've ever seen. Hollow your ears right out but you'll smile while it's happening

oh man i would love love love to see them live. i was just thinking about that this morning! like for the first time i really want to see live music again and it would be hof.

I've only seen them live once -- place was packed, hometown show fwiw -- totally worth it.

HoF is up there with MBV and Sunn O))) as a band you can feel.

I wasn't even a huge fan when I saw them the first time! I had many of their albums (most, actually), but more a casual fan. I had a ticket to see their Orlando show and was free the Friday before and decided to see them in Tampa. was a bit surprised by how much more I was into it than expected, and Pike's guitar leads were so fluid and clear and I felt like I could almost *see* them.

so I go again on Sunday, exhausted, tired, and cranky, and figure it's not going to be as good. the sound was overwhelmingly loud yet paradoxically clear, and Pike was pretty much holding his guitar like a literal weapon, couldn't believe the sounds he was getting out of that thing that night. probably a crowd of like 100, and everybody was going nuts, me included. didn't get to sleep until like 2 or 3 am cos I was so wound up about how great the show was, it far exceeded the first one, and for a while was my favorite show ever. when he got to the "Snakes for the Divine" encore it was like a gigantic victory lap.

became much more a fan, went back and bought the albums of theirs I didn't have.

only one time I saw them where they didn't destroy, and that was at Psycho Las Vegas last year. they were in a 10,000 seat convention center that swallowed them, and the sound was awful. Pike was visibly upset by it.

much better last year in Tampa, and the new material really slays live

yeah, I wasn't a major fan when I saw them either -- was pretty much going to hang with a friend who got in free to all the shows at the club where they were playing because she used to be neighbors with the club owners and had helped them with the remodel (mainly painting, nothing super fancy). Anyway, it was one of the few shows I have been to where I came into it with no expectations and was like, "damn, this is really fucking great." ...

One of the few post-70s bands where they're very much a metal band but don't really fit a metal subgenre.

Definitely one of the few bands that gets the "heavy" part of metal right. Their songs have weight, like you wouldn't want to drop one one your foot.

bendy and JiC otm. the guitars also sound and feel like buzzsaws. calling a guitar an 'axe' in this context makes perfect sense.

gotta credit Pike with battling a lot of issues to keep going, his alcoholism, then his diabetes health complications. had tickets to 4 diff shows of theirs that were cancelled for one reason or another for either reason. the last time (his toe amputation) I could almost hear his tears in the press release...he wanted to be on the road playing and it hurt to cancel those shows.

they weren't even the headliners of that show (Municipal Waste were) but I asked for a refund as I told the promoters "this lineup just got 75% lamer without them".

also had tickets tos ee them twice that I never used :(. once I accidentally forgot I had a conflict with the date and had to sell, the other they were playing in ATL and I was road weary and fighting a summer-long hangover due to my ambitious concert traveling and just couldn't bear to trek 8 hours to see another show. I regret that one a lot, esp cos of it being at a dope venue.

pretty incredible to be a member of Sleep and HoF simultaneously. I saw both last year!

i played electric messiah to death and then played vermiis to death and now i guess i'm ready to play luminiferous to death as it's really sounding great right now. "the falconist" and "the lethal chamber" are sooooo lit.

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?