“Your temple’s crumbling down.”
At time of print, High On Fire just wrapped their Cometh The Storm EU/UK tour (just one more festival date remains, at Sonic Blast Festival in Portugal). This London date was in the thick of four other UK dates and between France and Germany, landing on a firey summer night in an auspicious theatre venue. Here’s the view from the ground.
Words and photography by Dobbin T.
Silverburn
High On Fire could easily have picked a heavily road tested support act, but did really well to put Silverburn on, who sounded absolutely cutting edge. Working with the same tools as many bands in the doom-thrash-sludge continuum, they find a sweet spot between compositional complexity and buzzing heaviness. A swole band, in both sound and visage, Silverburn’s drummer busted out punishing beats whether they were simple four-on-the-floor verses or furious bridges in permanent fill. They went hard all the time, incorporating dynamics through tempo shifts and proggy turns instead of adjusting their volume. A highlight was “Pain Body (Torn from Auric Field)” featuring the insane line “Your psychic attack disables me only momentarily“, clarifying that Silverburn are proudly here to be the 2020s soundtrack for 1980s comic book action scenes.
High On Fire
The legendary Matt Pike wielded a Gibson with three pickups, three amplifiers, and three miced cabinets. With all that cranking, you might think the end result would be inarticulate. It walked a fine line but clearly worked. All the gain kept intensity high through the solos, avoiding the need for a rhythm guitarist. Pike could also play most of the riffs just with his left hand, hammering on without losing any volume. His vocals were deliciously grizzled, a country singer left to mature on Arrakis. It was simply amazing to see Pike perform.
Jeff Matz’ setup was lean by comparison. His double headed bass-meets-guitar was used only the songs that really needed it, such as “Burning Down”, “Cometh The Storm” from the new record. Coady Willis was hardly visible through the fog but made his presence known with blistering drum performances up and down High On Fire’s discography.
Having rinsed their new album Cometh The Storm I relished a setlist that was loaded with its tracks, not to mention “Karanlik Yol” making an awesome walk-on song. Playing “Sol’s Golden Curse” shows that its nutty prog influences were not just studio theory. A range of other classic High On Fire tracks were warmly recognised by the audience, including tracks from the depths of time (“Last” and “Hung, Drawn and Quartered”) and their lauded middle era (with particular focus on Death Is This Communion). Possibly the most hype track was the epic “Snakes for the Divine”, the last chance for the audience to frolic as the close of the set was dedicated to the doomy “Darker Fleece”, with an even more titanic ending than you’ll find on Cometh The Storm.
As I basked in all their glory, I realised there really is something amazing about High On Fire. It’s rock and roll taken to its epitome. As their legacy continues to growth, no matter what live has been throwing at Pike and co, they only get more special. You really can’t say the same for so many other bands, even those who are more foundational than High On Fire.
Check out our review of Cometh The Storm here.