Latest Release
- APR 19, 2024
- 11 Songs
- Snakes for the Divine (Bonus Track Edition) · 2010
- Electric Messiah · 2018
- Death Is This Communion · 2007
- Cometh the Storm · 2024
- Death Is This Communion · 2007
- Blessed Black Wings · 2005
- Cometh the Storm · 2024
- Cometh the Storm · 2024
- Electric Messiah · 2018
- Luminiferous · 2015
Essential Albums
- When Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister was still alive, Matt Pike—singer/guitarist in High On Fire and the iconic stoner-metal band Sleep—often found himself compared to the late legend. Once, he even dreamed that Lemmy got mad at him about it. So, three years after the legendary frontman died of cancer, Pike’s Oakland-based sludge trio released a tribute album in his honor. It’s their most diverse—and maybe best—record yet. The riffs are loud, the rhythms are dizzying, and the Motörhead influence is obvious, but it’s still very much a High On Fire album. Land speed record contenders such as “Spewn From the Earth” and “God of the Godless” sit alongside more than 10 minutes of crushing doom in “Sanctioned Annihilation.” The title track, directly inspired by Pike’s dream, pays homage to the late, great Ace of Spades himself. Loud, brutal, nostalgic: Electric Messiah is proof that 20 years in, High On Fire is only getting better.
- Probably the greatest compliment one can pay High On Fire is that no band comes heavier. As stoner/doom-metal dudes, Matt Pike and Co. (bassist Jeff Matz and drummer Des Kensel) go for the jugular at all points, relegating subtlety to other bands not as singularly devoted to producing such heaviness. The title track crunches for eight-plus minutes that tributes Celtic Frost at their heaviest before giving way to the album’s first “single,” “Frost Hammer,” where the band tightens the approach ever so slightly: only in comparison to the complete shredders that follow. “Ghost Neck” begins the furious roll of the album’s second half where the band makes a brilliant bid as 2010’s most essential metal band. “The Path” is the minute-and- -a-half intro that sends the group into its darkest corner. “Fire, Flood & Plague,” “How Dark We Pray” and “Holy Flames of the Firespitter” offer solid marching tunes that veer into melodic passageways just under the dungeon. The multi-year wait for <I>Snakes</I> has brought a notable addition to their impeccable catalog.
Albums
- 2015
Music Videos
- 2024
- 2024
- 2016
- 2012
- 2010
Artist Playlists
- Pummeling doom metal powered by vicious thrash riffs.
Singles & EPs
About High On Fire
High On Fire galvanized stoner rock at the turn of the millennium by injecting furious metallic riffage and thrash-caliber speed into the genre’s cloudy grooves. Cofounded in 1999 by Sleep guitarist Matt Pike, the Oakland, CA, band debuted the following year with The Art of Self Defense and soon after linked up with respected metal label Relapse Records for 2002’s Surrounded By Thieves. High On Fire subsequently worked with Steve Albini and Jack Endino—the latter produced the band’s 2007 breakthrough, Death Is This Communion—before settling into a productive working partnership with Converge’s Kurt Ballou. That led to ferocious full-lengths like 2012’s De Vermis Mysteriis and even helped the band win a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for the title track of 2018’s Electric Messiah.
- FROM
- Oakland, CA, United States
- FORMED
- 1998
- GENRE
- Metal