Logo
DiS Needs You: Save our site »
  • The Damned - Evil Spirits 2 days ago
  • Slug - HiggledyPiggledy 2 days ago
  • Christina Vantzou - No. 4 3 days ago
  • The Fangasm: The Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit 3 days ago
  • Laura Veirs - The Lookout 5 days ago
  • Eels - The Deconstruction 5 days ago
  • A Place To Bury Strangers - Pinned 5 days ago
  • "I am fascinated by art that asks a lot of questions": DiS Meets Jenny Wilson 5 days ago
  • Logo_home2
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • In Photos
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Search
  • Community
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • Blog
  • Community

High On Fire

Snakes for the Divine

Label: Century Media Release Date: 08/03/2010

57703
darts_players_wives by Noel Gardner March 4th, 2010

What would the Matt Pike of twenty years ago, a teenager in a crusty metallic hardcore band called Asbestosdeath, have made of his adult incarnation’s band High On Fire – most specifically, their decision to sell the ‘complete’ eleven-song version of their fifth studio album Snakes For The Divine exclusively in monolithic US chain store Best Buy? It’s not a rhetorical question; heck, he might admire grownup Matt for his attempt to weasel a few more sheets out of The Man in exchange for not much. It does, however, lend weight to the notion that High On Fire, a Californian trio who have unleashed some quite superlative heavy metal across the last decade, are at a crossroads as regards their career, and their potential future excursions.

Now signed to E1 Music, formerly Koch, in the States – a major label but for only the most spurious technicalities – and licensed to huge European metal imprint Century Media, the band's knobs were twiddled by an appropriately big-buxx producer. People who know Greg Fidelman from his work on Metallica’s Death Magnetic, which he’s widely considered to have made a pig’s ear of, will be pleased to hear that he hasn’t managed to quell the raging beast flowing through HoF’s cables. Given that their previous three desk jockeys were Jack Endino, Steve Albini and Billy Anderson, though, he hasn’t really filled those sizeable shoes. Des Kensel’s drums sound flat, Jeff Matz’s bass sometimes indistinct; the tactic of placing Pike’s vocals higher in the mix pays dividends, but broadly speaking, this album is good because of the people who played on it.

If this constitutes a shot at the stratosphere, is it likely to be futile? Part of me suspects there is an inbuilt limit to how big HoF could realistically become. They are not innately marketable, at least not to a wider metal public; their loose image of ordinary Joes seems to be sincere, ditto their lack of naked ambition beyond being able to do this for a living and having fun doing it. Yet it’s hard to listen to Snakes For The Divine and not experience flashes of contemplation about how sweet it would be if this trio became serious-business unit shifters. Pike, for one, has a certain iconic aura about him, as well as (and as a result of) being at the absolute top of the tree in terms of innovation and sheer FORCE in the medium of heavy metal guitar playing. Moreover, they write incredibly hook-filled and catchy songs – objectively, no less so than Metallica or Slayer on their respective first three albums, and certainly no less so than more recent mainstream graduates like Lamb Of God or Mastodon.

The album opens with the title track, which itself begins with a palate-cleansing burst of unaccompanied Very Metal guitar wheedle; its swift transformation into a crusted beefsteak of a Mötorchug is no great surprise, but handled with a rare finesse. Pike still appears to be using Lemmy and Jerry A from Poison Idea as his dual vocal blueprints, and longterm HoF fans may wonder if the lyric “Ten thousand years are left behind” is self-referential. ‘Frost Hammer’ represents the band at pretty much peak performance, and one suspects it’ll become one of their definitive songs in time. The drum rolls are punkishly frantic and the guitar breaks would make any of those endearingly backward-facing ‘true metal’ bands highly envious.

A rare ‘slow one’, before the introduction of an heroically histrionic solo at any rate, entitled ‘Bastard Samurai’ doesn’t strike with quite the same venom as the speedier rippers on Snakes For The Divine, although the guitar tone employed by Pike as he enacts those lumphammer riffs retains the thrill factor. That it’s immediately upended by ‘Ghost Neck’, probably the album’s most hardcore-like moment, suggests HoF know that while people came to them partly due to their doomy ancestry (Pike’s tenure in cannabinoid-hailing legends Sleep), ultimately they stayed for the whiplash-inducing bangers. That said, ‘How Dark We Pray’ conveys a flagrantly doom-ish mood, of the faster Saint Vitus/Angel Witch kind, and is still a corker.

High On Fire’s development, for want of a better word, has a lot to do with extraneous factors – their new label, the slightly icky marketing deals they’ve arranged and those aforementioned production wrinkles – and very little to do with what happens when three gentlemen rain blows on their respective instruments. Which is to say that although this doesn’t quite scale the heights of their two previous LPs, Death Is This Communion and Blessed Black Wings, it shouldn’t be thought of as a point of no return. As ambassadors for metal, they remain near-peerless.

  • 7
    Noel Gardner's Score
Log-in to rate this record out of 10
Share on
   
Love DiS? Become a Patron of the site here »


LATEST


  • The Damned

    Evil Spirits


  • Slug

    HiggledyPiggledy


  • Christina Vantzou

    No. 4


  • The Fangasm: The Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit


  • Laura Veirs

    The Lookout


  • Eels

    The Deconstruction



Left-arrow

New Young Pony Club

The Optimist

Mobback
57756
57699

Pavement

Quarantine the Past

Mobforward
Right-arrow


LATEST

    review


    The Damned - Evil Spirits

  • 105536
  • review


    Slug - HiggledyPiggledy

  • 105535

    review


    Christina Vantzou - No. 4

  • 105534
  • Column


    The Fangasm: The Midnight Organ Fight by Fright...

  • 105533

    review


    Laura Veirs - The Lookout

  • 105532
  • review


    Eels - The Deconstruction

  • 105531

    review


    A Place To Bury Strangers - Pinned

  • 105530
  • Interview


    "I am fascinated by art that asks a lot of ques...

  • 105529
MORE


    feature


    A Month in Records: August 2008

  • 33467
  • review


    Coldplay - Ghost Stories

  • 95631

    review


    Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

  • 7335
  • feature


    Cursive - Six Recorded Highlights

  • 45147

    review


    Sonic Youth - Nurse

  • 6044
  • review


    Kate Nash - Made Of Bricks

  • 26283

    DiScover


    DiScover: Friendly Fires

  • 93726
  • news


    DiS curates the #IndependentMusicMonday Playlist

  • 101788
MORE

Drowned in Sound
  • DROWNED IN SOUND
  • HOME
  • SITE MAP
  • NEWS
  • IN DEPTH
  • IN PHOTOS
  • RECORDS
  • RECOMMENDED RECORDS
  • ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
  • FESTIVAL COVERAGE
  • COMMUNITY
  • MUSIC FORUM
  • SOCIAL BOARD
  • REPORT ERRORS
  • CONTACT US
  • JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
  • FOLLOW DiS
  • GOOGLE+
  • FACEBOOK
  • TWITTER
  • SHUFFLER
  • TUMBLR
  • YOUTUBE
  • RSS FEED
  • RSS EMAIL SUBSCRIBE
  • MISC
  • TERM OF USE
  • PRIVACY
  • ADVERTISING
  • OUR WIKIPEDIA
© 2000-2018 DROWNED IN SOUND