High On Fire – De Vermis Mysteriis
‘DENY MY POWER AND I’LL BURN YOU AS THE DEAD IS’ bellows Matt Pike on ‘Spiritual Rats’s’ snap-like hook, just one vulgar display of power amongst many on this, HoF’s 6th studio album. When the universe finally obliterates itself by contracting to the point of infinity it will sound like this: rugged, broken, earth-scorching and dirt-riven stoner metal. 25 seconds in two things are apparent: 1) HoF continue to exist in a class of their own, and as one of metal’s most vibrant – and visceral – bands; 2) the sheen of 2010’s Greg Feldman produced ‘Snakes For The Divine’ is long gone. This is filthy, nasty, bestial. The sort of raw power HoF delivered on career high ‘Death Is This Communion’ (2007). But this is also a different record from ‘Death…’. Less progressive, less prone to delicate interludes amongst the Motorhead on crack madness. This is undoubtedly due, in part, to the production of Converge’s Kurt Ballou. Alongside adding a crispness and sonic depth, he also seems to have had an impact on the songs, which feel shorter, more focussed and – crucially – more hardcore: there is barely a second’s let up here as songs switch from one uppercut riff to another. It’s as instantaneous as it is infectious.
But there is another difference, too. The primitive rumble of the music is juxtaposed with the ambitious opacity of the concept - the title is taken from a fictional magic book by Robert Bloch (and later employed by H.P. Lovecraft in a number of stories), whilst the songs themselves are framed by a couple of theoretical questions: "What if Jesus had a twin who died at birth to give Jesus his life? And then what if the twin became a time traveler right then?" Sound familiar? There is more than a whiff of Mastodon’s ‘Crack The Skye’ here, which is about a paraplegic who escapes his body through astral travels, moves through wormholes and ends up in Rasputin’s body. And you can hear Mastodon in the music, too: juddering rhythms, whirlwind chord structures and snapping, ungodly time changes. It would be easy to criticise, but HoF are only taking back what Mastodon borrowed, and the effect is to heighten an existing aesthetic rather than changing the way that the band sounds.
And – as always – they sound phenomenal. ‘Bloody Knuckles’ opens with the sort of riff that could sink an ocean liner – and is quickly followed by an even heavier one. Smashing Black Sabbath into Minor Threat, the band thrash it up at the end, but with so much bottom end the result is the sound of a jet engine taking off. ‘Madness Of An Architect’ channels some funked-up Meshuggah discordance, slow, thuddering and hypnotic, it’s landscape crushingly heavy. Even when they’re doing simple – ‘Romulus & Remus’ – they sound collosal, and distinctive. Perhaps the best bands always reinvent a common idiom. On ‘Warhorn’ – an ode to battle, a clarion call of metal, HoF due just that.
Perhaps the title-track isn’t quite up to the quality of the rest. And, perhaps, some of the expansiveness and jamming is missed. But those are aesthetic choices, not fundamental problems – no-one could deny the quantity of the quality here, or the fact that HoF have been seminal in the metal world fomenting – alongside Neurosis – both the rise of doom/sludge and prog metal into the mainstream during the ‘noughties’. Given that Matt Pike’s other band – ‘Sleep’ – were equally pioneering a decade earlier, it would almost be more surprising if this didn’t deliver. But, even by their own standards ‘De Vermiis…’ is a remarkable, stunning, and unholly bestial album which will be near the top of most critics ‘Best of Year’ polls come December. This is the sort of sonically immaculate magnum opus on which legends are built and confirmed.
‘DENY MY POWER AND I’LL BURN YOU AS THE DEAD IS’ bellows Matt Pike on ‘Spiritual Rats’s’ snap-like hook, just one vulgar display of power amongst many on this, HoF’s 6th studio album. When the universe finally obliterates itself by contracting to the point of infinity it will sound like this: rugged, broken, earth-scorching and dirt-riven stoner metal. 25 seconds in two things are apparent: 1) HoF continue to exist in a class of their own, and as one of metal’s most vibrant – and visceral – bands; 2) the sheen of 2010’s Greg Feldman produced ‘Snakes For The Divine’ is long gone. This is filthy, nasty, bestial. The sort of raw power HoF delivered on career high ‘Death Is This Communion’ (2007). But this is also a different record from ‘Death…’. Less progressive, less prone to delicate interludes amongst the Motorhead on crack madness. This is undoubtedly due, in part, to the production of Converge’s Kurt Ballou. Alongside adding a crispness and sonic depth, he also seems to have had an impact on the songs, which feel shorter, more focussed and – crucially – more hardcore: there is barely a second’s let up here as songs switch from one uppercut riff to another. It’s as instantaneous as it is infectious.
But there is another difference, too. The primitive rumble of the music is juxtaposed with the ambitious opacity of the concept - the title is taken from a fictional magic book by Robert Bloch (and later employed by H.P. Lovecraft in a number of stories), whilst the songs themselves are framed by a couple of theoretical questions: "What if Jesus had a twin who died at birth to give Jesus his life? And then what if the twin became a time traveler right then?" Sound familiar? There is more than a whiff of Mastodon’s ‘Crack The Skye’ here, which is about a paraplegic who escapes his body through astral travels, moves through wormholes and ends up in Rasputin’s body. And you can hear Mastodon in the music, too: juddering rhythms, whirlwind chord structures and snapping, ungodly time changes. It would be easy to criticise, but HoF are only taking back what Mastodon borrowed, and the effect is to heighten an existing aesthetic rather than changing the way that the band sounds.
And – as always – they sound phenomenal. ‘Bloody Knuckles’ opens with the sort of riff that could sink an ocean liner – and is quickly followed by an even heavier one. Smashing Black Sabbath into Minor Threat, the band thrash it up at the end, but with so much bottom end the result is the sound of a jet engine taking off. ‘Madness Of An Architect’ channels some funked-up Meshuggah discordance, slow, thuddering and hypnotic, it’s landscape crushingly heavy. Even when they’re doing simple – ‘Romulus & Remus’ – they sound collosal, and distinctive. Perhaps the best bands always reinvent a common idiom. On ‘Warhorn’ – an ode to battle, a clarion call of metal, HoF due just that.
Perhaps the title-track isn’t quite up to the quality of the rest. And, perhaps, some of the expansiveness and jamming is missed. But those are aesthetic choices, not fundamental problems – no-one could deny the quantity of the quality here, or the fact that HoF have been seminal in the metal world fomenting – alongside Neurosis – both the rise of doom/sludge and prog metal into the mainstream during the ‘noughties’. Given that Matt Pike’s other band – ‘Sleep’ – were equally pioneering a decade earlier, it would almost be more surprising if this didn’t deliver. But, even by their own standards ‘De Vermiis…’ is a remarkable, stunning, and unholly bestial album which will be near the top of most critics ‘Best of Year’ polls come December. This is the sort of sonically immaculate magnum opus on which legends are built and confirmed.
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