Free As A Bird

I was a pre-teen and teenager in the dark days of the mid-to-late 80s. For a kid that wanted his music loud, fast, and marginally offensive the powers that be wanted to make it as hard as possible for a 14-year old to get his slab of expletive-strewn metal. When I first started buying music […]

High on Fire : Cometh The Storm

It’s been over 5 years since the last High on Fire album, the Lemmy-worshipping Electric Messiah. Since then HoF singer/guitarist/resident conspiracy theorist Matt Pike has dealt with health issues, marriage, divorce, and a solo album titled Pike vs The Automaton. Pike vs The Automaton was essentially a High on Fire album, minus HoF bassist Jeff […]

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 […]

High on Fire : Electric Messiah

Matt Pike has had a pretty busy year. In April he and Sleep dropped the surprise 4/20 record The Sciences. It was the first new Sleep material since their Adult Swim Singles Series track “The Clarity” from 2014. Then a couple months later Sleep drops yet another Adult Swim single called “Leagues Beneath”, possibly recorded […]

Some Things That Should Not Be(But Are, So Deal With It)

The first album I ever heard from Metallica was Master Of Puppets, so naturally that’s the one I hold nearest and dearest to my heart. Master Of Puppets was the gateway album, Ride The Lightning was the one I totally immersed myself in, …And Justice For All was the first one I bought brand new(and […]

Motorbreathless

Metallica were the gateway band for me. My older brother and his bad influence ways pushed Master of Puppets on me like some greasy punk passing me my first joint in the middle school basketball courts. We drove on US 33 on our way to the mall one hot summer afternoon and he pushed a […]

“I’d rather listen to Lizzy Borden, to be quite honest.”

Summer of 1987. This was the summer where I discovered metal. Speed metal, that is. I’d done the classics by the time I’d hit the 7th grade. Made my way through the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Stones, and Hendrix. AC/DC were in my collection, as well as a good chunk of hair metal. Most of […]

Hell Awaits…among other things

The scariest concert I ever went to(besides Petra at the Notre Dame ACC with my uncle’s youth group) was Slayer in 1991. They were only one quarter of that evening’s entertainment, but they made up for it with sheer velocity, anger, and a smidgen of evil. I was 17 years old and as part of […]

Antisocial…and loving it!

If you think about it State of Euphoria by Anthrax really didn’t have a chance. It’s the bland meat in-between the out of this world speed metal artisan bun known as Among The Living and Persistence Of Time. Among The Living is the premier thrash album from 1987. It was the proto-speed/thrash metal album, and one of […]

The Need For Speed

Year’s ’94 and my trunk is raw In my rear view mirror is the motherfucking law – Shawn Carter Okay, actually the year wasn’t ’94, it was ’88. 1988 to be exact. It was the last day of my 8th grade year and my mom picked me up from school. We only went a half […]