HIGH ON FIRE
Pitch Black Blessing
By: JJ Koczan Photo: K. Scanlon
It was shortly after the release of 1999’s 60-minute epic Jerusalem that guitarist/vocalist Matt Pike and company dissolved Sleep, one of the most solidly influential purveyors of slow, down-tuned metal ever to call America its home.
Almost six months later, Pike resurfaced in High on Fire, which, while maintaining some of the same essential elements of Sleep (i.e., Pike himself), has a much faster, more intense sound. Expansive guitars and the massive drum work of Des Kensel play off each other in a fury of riffs that have garnered the band much critical praise and well-justified comparisons to Black Sabbath and Motorhead.
They first formed when Pike found a bass player who “had a rehearsal space too, which was a plus.” Pike and Kensel would eventually meet through a mutual friend.
“I call him up and he comes down with all his drums shoved in his beat up old Malibu,” laughs Pike. “And I just remember both me and him staring at each other and I couldn’t stop laughing. I started cracking up and he started cracking up and ever since that day, me and him have been pretty inseparable musically.”
With Kensel, Pike and a bassist with a studio, High on Fire was a full band. Before too long though, styles clashed and for a short time, Kensel left the group. “He quit on purpose as a chess move,” Pike recalls, laughing. “He played a little game of band chess.”
Says Kensel, “I was like, ‘I fuckin’ love playing with Matt, and he’s been friends with this guy for a long time. Can’t really get in the middle of that. Fuck this drive, and the music this guy’s coming up with.
’Alright, maybe if I quit, Matt’ll be able to come to his senses and then just after [the bassist] goes on his way, he’ll call me up and want to jam again.’ Kinda cool that it worked out.”
“Dude, I’d way rather have my fuckin’ rook than a pawn,” Pike declares about kicking out the problematic bassist, as both he and Kensel break out laughing.
The band’s time on the road has made the two of them good, close friends. It’s plain to see from the way they speak to and about each other that their relationship is an essential part of what makes High on Fire the band it is.
A short time after Kensel came back into the fold, Pike’s longtime friend George Rice filled the open bass position, and the power trio High on Fire was complete.
The Art Of Self Defense, the band’s first full-length album, was produced by Billy Anderson (Fantomas, Eyehategod) and released in 2000 on the now-defunct Man’s Ruin label (later reissued through Tee Pee Records), but it wasn’t until the band made the jump to much-lauded extreme metal indie Relapse Records that they really hit their stride. Also produced by Anderson, 2002’s Surrounded By Thieves solidified the band as a serious force in the world of underground metal.
The band toured relentlessly on the record, including stints with Clutch, Mastodon and Alabama Thunderpussy. Unfortunately, the road proved to be too much for Rice, who quit the band shortly before they went back into the studio in 2004.
“He got kind of burnt,” says Kensel sadly. “His heart wasn’t in it anymore. It’s a rough lifestyle, and it was just taking its toll on him.”
“He just wants to relax. He doesn’t want to be on the road,” adds Pike. “I can totally understand, man. Sometimes it’s really hard and it gets to you, being on the road all the fucking time. It’s hard to keep your family around. You never see your fucking friends. It’s hard to keep a fucking house to live in, because you’re never there.”
Replacing Rice turned out to be an easier task for Kensel and Pike than they initially thought. All it took was a phone call.
“We were talking about it one day at a job we had and we were just like, ‘How about Joe Preston?’ recalls Kensel. “So I went home that night and called up Greg Anderson from Southern Lord Records, and even before I could mention Joe’s name I remember just being like, ‘Hey Greg, you know, don’t really get the word out, but we have a feeling George is gonna quit on us anytime now and we’ve got a record to do. Got any ideas?’ And he was like, ‘Well, you know, Joe Preston might work really good.’ And I said, ‘As a matter of fact, I was just going to ask you for his number.’
Preston, an ex-member of The Melvins who was on tour at the time, was eager to fill the position.
“He jumped on that fuckin’ quick,” Pike remembers, laughing. “The irony of it is that Joe was telling us that he was just saying, ‘If I ever played in a band again, you know, I’d really like to play in High on Fire.’ And we called him like a week after he had that thought.”
If it seems like it was meant to be, there’s a good reason for it. Preston, although different stylistically from Rice, learned the songs for what would become High on Fire’s latest release, Blessed Black Wings in just one week.
“He’s a really fucking good bass player,” explains Pike. With most of the material written, parts were sketched out for Preston to expand on, and although the result
on the album carries some evidence of Preston’s style, Pike and Kensel are looking forward to being able to actually write songs with him.
“The sky’s the limit,” Pike declares. “With Joe I feel like we can do a lot more now. Having the input of another musician like that should change our direction a little bit, but we’re still gonna keep that High on Fire super-heavy fucking drive. Just the songwriting skills is one thing, and what Joe’s gonna bring to the table I don’t know.
“Obviously, what George was bringing to the table on the first two, that was George’s way, and this is a little different. But we didn’t get to really write the songs with Joe. I think once we start writing songs with Joe it’s going to definitely alter the way that we write songs. I don’t know. I have no idea where it’s gonna go.”
“We’ll ask the magic 8 ball,” laughs Kensel.
Released on Feb. 1, 2005, Blessed Black Wings finds High on Fire heading into more progressive territory. Not moving away from the sound that has earned them such underground acclaim, but adding to it, expanding on it, experimenting and trying not to repeat themselves. Part of the process was bringing in Steve Albini to sit at the board.
“Albini’s fucking great. He’s a genius,” says Pike of the famed Nirvana and Neurosis producer. “He knows that studio like the back of his hand. He starts cutting up your takes and you’re all, ‘Dude, what are you doing, man?’ It scares the shit out of you, but he knows exactly what he’s fuckin’ doing.”
“He’s like a mad scientist,” laughs Kensel. “He had his own set of overalls with the Electrical symbol silk-screened on the back, so it was like his mechanic’s uniform. He does not go down into the studio without that thing on.”
“He’s a really great guy,” Pike continues. “I know a lot of people say he’s an asshole, but I think it’s because a lot of people can’t take his cynicism. He’s fuckin’ hilarious and he’s really smartass about everything.
“I think the thing that broke the ice was immediately we walk in and he’s like this cynical little smartass with a bunch of fart jokes and obviously we fell right in.
So we had a great time.”
In comparing Albini and Billy Anderson’s production styles, Pike says, “Albini’s real straightforward and raw, and we wanted to capture the side of us that would be how we were playing live, but have the option of getting really good takes and doing some overdubs and experimenting. It just gave us more room to experiment with a new thing instead of the same old system and the same old formula. We needed a new formula and a new set of ears to hear us from a different point of view. That’s why we chose Albini.”
“To do something different,” Kensel adds. “Take a little bit of a chance.”
Pike knows the consequences of not progressing. “You know exactly what the album’s gonna sound like when you [don’t]. ‘Well, I know what it’ll be like.’ In the case of Blessed Black Wings, “It should be able to catch everybody off guard.”
Although presented with different production, the album holds onto the trademark High on Fire grit in careful balance with the band’s burgeoning musical maturity. Songs like “Face of Oblivion,” and “Anointing of Seer” are more dynamic in the sense of expressing different tones and moods, but underneath it all is the dirt in the fingernails, the barebones, stripped-down, bullshit-free sensibility upon which all the associations to the Metal Gods of Yore are based.
Kensel attributes the largeness of the band’s sound to their gear and adds, “Going a little low-end heavy for us kind of helps it sound a little heavier.”
“We did the low end naturally,” notes Pike about the recording process. “Joe went through all these amps and fucked with the tone until he had the right low end tone, instead of adding a bunch of sub to it from the board. Joe tried to record the low end, get the low end out of the bass on a natural mic instead of adding it to it.”
“Instead of that low frequency jammer or whatever that thing was,” Kensel cuts in, laughing at the thought.
“Oh yeah, the dookie smoke frequency jammer!” Pike recalls.
The album takes its title from the notion of recidivism. Pike explains, “It’s kind of like the angel and the demon sitting on your shoulders, you know. Just fucking up. Meaning well, but you always go back to your old ways. It’s like, you get depressed and you go on that week-long drunk binge and you wake up, and it really did you no fucking good but at the time it made you forget about it for a week.”
“And you’re in a worse position than you were a week ago. ‘Fuck, now I’ve got no money and I still feel like shit,’ Kensel laughs.
“We’ve all struggled with alcohol addictions, cocaine addictions, sexual addictions, different things like that,” Pike continues. “That’s kind of what it’s about. It’s about adversity and the struggle that we have doing this sort of lifestyle. That’s what the title ultimately means, and I think it’s something deep down in everybody that everybody does.”
He elaborates, “If you’re like, ‘Today I’m gonna quit smoking,’ and a couple days later you’re fuckin’ smoking again. Or, ‘I’m never touching that shit again,’ and next night, sure enough there’s a big fuckin’ line of cocaine in front of you and you’re all, ‘Do I do it, do I not do it?’ And you wake up and you’re all, ‘My eyes are black, I haven’t slept for bit.’ It’s the duality inside of everybody, you know.”
Three days after the album’s release, High on Fire embarked on a tour with Kylesa and Planes Mistaken for Stars that took them across the US and back again to their home state of California. The potential destinations seem to be pouring in as the album makes its way into more and more hands.
“We will be [touring] for at least the next six months straight on this record,” says Kensel. “With a few weeks’ break in between, but they’re already talking about two weeks in Japan. They’re trying to figure out whether or not we can get on some festivals this summer in Europe, who we could possibly get to either be a support act for us or who we could be a support act for early summer or late spring. We’re going to be going until the end of summer.”
“Then maybe we’ll have the chance to do some writing,” Pike adds.
“If I even want to hold a pair of drumsticks by then,” Kensel replies quickly.
The two men are optimistic about the band’s prospects. Their hard work and time spent on tour as both headliners and opening acts has put them in a position of being a band on the brink. The hope is that Blessed Black Wings pushes them over.
“We’ll see how it goes,” Kensel laughs.
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