Revisiting High On Fire’s ‘The Art of Self Defense’

I didn’t find my way to Matt Pike and High On Fire until the late 2000s. A friend shared a bunch of music files with me, and while most didn’t stick two bands did : Boards of Canada and High On Fire. Yes, complete polar opposites in terms of style, vibe, and general all around mood, but from those beer-soaked, late night music listening sessions came my obsession with the down tempo electronic wizards and the literal wizard Matt Pike and High On Fire.

Boards Of Canada was kind of instantaneous for me. It was almost as if there was a pocket in my brain that was just waiting to be filled with albums like Music Has The Right To Children, Geogaddi, and The Campfire Headphase. The music seemed to be a piece of my overall life puzzle that once I’d discovered it, it was almost and audible “Ah ha!” sort of moment. As my son got older we listened to a lot of Boards Of Canada together and he became a fan as well. If I can’t think of anything else to listen to, Boards Of Canada works every time…all the time.

High On Fire took a little longer to truly lock into.

I think the aggressive nature of Matt Pike’s post-Sleep project lent itself as a more tricky thing to fit into the day to day. It’d been years since I listened to anything close to speed metal, and High On Fire definitely falls in that category. I’d pull it up on my iTunes when I had a little listening time to myself and was feeling particularly down for some music violence. Or if I was at work and was on my own for the day I’d bring up Blessed Black Wings and feel a quiet satisfaction looking at the Heavy Metal-art style album art and the build up at the beginning of “Devilution”. But besides the occasional delve, I didn’t really connect to High On Fire.

But then in 2013 I bought a repress of Sleep’s Dopesmoker and suddenly found myself in the hazy, THC-fueled world of stoner/sludge metal heaven. I found the fact that three stoned dudes decided to record an hour-length song about a fictional planet and its inhabitants called “Weedians” too fun not to delve in. The slow churning rhythm, chant-like vocals, and that guitar riff that sounded as if it grew a foot-thick layer of mammoth fur and pot vines made me appreciate what these cats were doing all the more. It was like a musical Dune written by Cheech and Chong; Spice replaced with weed and chugging stacks of Marshalls.

I came to appreciate Matt Pike as a musician, songwriter, and personality. I loved the slow motion sludge and Sabbath worshipping with Sleep, so I jumped back into High On Fire to see if I could hear something that I wasn’t quite locking into before. At this time I’d begun buying OG pressings of some of my favorite thrash/speed metal albums I grew up on in the 80s. Anthrax’ State of Euphoria and Among The Living, as well as a good chunk of Slayer’s catalog. Revisiting albums like Hell Awaits, Reign In Blood, and South Of Heaven I started to hear a lot of the touchstones of High On Fire’s sonic palate; breakneck rhythms, punishing double kicks, Pike’s banshee, blood-gargling growl, and chunky, super fast riffing.

One thing that Pike improved on was soloing. While I loved the Hanneman/King by-the-seat-of-their-pants noodling, Matt Pike had a more fluid style to his solos. Fast, but melodic. He was, after all, a student of the Iommi School Of Guitar.

My ears were perked. It was time to jump in head first.

I didn’t start at the beginning, though. The first HoF album I bought on vinyl was Surrounded By Wolves. Still one of my favorite HoF albums, this was where Pike turned up the speed from Sleep’s chugging, grass-fed grooves to something more in line with the Bay Area OGs. Surrounded By Wolves was ruthless and took no prisoners. Amazing metal record, and still one of the best to come out in the last 20+ years.

De Vermis Mysteriis was next, and opened my eyes(and ears) to the truly wild imagination and conspiracy theory-obsessed nature of Pike’s lyrics and album concepts. De Vermis Mysteriis was about the idea that Jesus had a twin that died in childbirth in order to give Jesus life. And at that moment the self-sacrificed twin became a time traveler.

Pretty neat.

Anyways, the album is another stunner. So was 2015s Luminiferous. “The Black Pot” and “The Cave” are killer HoF songs. And it also showed a different side to Pike and HoF, with “The Cave” being more of a slow burn kind of song(I believe it was inspired by a recent break up.)

I mean, there isn’t a bad album in the High On Fire discography. Blessed Black Wings, Death Is The Communion, and Snakes For The Divine are musical catnip for the truly metal-starved wannabe Hesher.

So after a few albums I decided to turn the hands of time back and give High On Fire’s humble beginnings a listen. The Art Of Self Defense came out in 2000, a few years after Sleep had recorded their stoner opus and had gotten the shaft from their label about how to release their 60-minute Weedian epic. The band split up and set out to do their own things separately. Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius formed Om, while Matt Pike hit the ground running with High On Fire(Sleep did release more music years later in the form of a couple singles and one full-length, 2018s The Sciences.)

The Art Of Self Defense opens with the gauzy and dense guitars of “Baghdad”, a song that still lingers in Sleep territory, albeit with more dexterity in the rhythm and Pike’s vocals are glass-gurgling war cries, as opposed to Cisneros’ stoned chants. Despite the shadow of Sleep hanging over the proceedings it’s apparent Matt Pike was ready to start a new sonic chapter. And in this chapter, there will be blood.

Tracks like “10,000 Years” and “Blood From Zion” do not yet hint at the breakneck speed and speed metal mayhem future albums would possess, but the aggressive attack is still there nonetheless. Matt Pike sounds like a guy that’s been waiting to wail for a decade and wail he does. “Last” crunches bones and lacerates eardrums, while the 8 1/2 minute “Fireface” locks fully back into slow-churning riffs and a sluggish bass line that would make Geezer Butler proud. Of course the closing track, the epic 10 minute “Master Of Fists” has become a High On Fire classic. Matt Pike shows off some impressive fretwork while the band’s slow-as-molasses tempo grooves on until the 6 minute mark when the tribal drums kick in and the bloodletting begins.

Revisiting this stoner/doom classic I was stoked to take a several day High On Fire sabbatical; ensconced in razor riffs, moss-growing fuzz, and some seriously brain-scrambling drum and bass. And then to find out that this masterclass in heaviness is getting a brand new remix by stoner rock producer/wizard Billy Anderson, and in a cool as hell splatter vinyl color variant? Well let’s just say it must have been serendipity.

Of course I preordered that bad boy.

Do with my adoration of Matt Pike and High On Fire as you wish. If you know, you know. If you don’t, well get in the know. Yo. Even though beer-soaked nights are pretty far behind me, I’m thankful for a handful of them. Without them I may not have come across the genius of Boards Of Canada. And definitely not the brutal majesty that is High On Fire, and The Art Of Self Defense.