Got Riff?
It seems a shame that every time High On Fire play a show in London it is in a smaller venue than the one before. Chatting to bassist Jeff Matz outside the venue though, he confirmed that this was very much a last minute booking (the only UK date on the tour in fact) so probably not something to look too much in to. With all that said, performance wise High On Fire were honestly on the form of their lives. The Underworld can be quite hit and miss for sound, but tonight everything was absolutely on point, and right from the first riff Matt Pike, sporting a rather tremendous handle-bar moustache, had the sold out crowd in the palm of his hand. And with the masses descending on Bloodstock on the same weekend, it was excellent to see this indeed sell out.
The set list on the night was excellent, pulling material from across the band's discography, with the biggest reactions for some of the stuff off their very popular latest album, De Vermis Mysteriis, as Fertile Green and Madness Of An Architect turned the place into a war-zone. Matt Pike was bang on form all night, stomping around grinning at the carnage the band were creating in front of them - since becoming completely clean, he is playing better than ever. As a unit though, the band sounded really tight as they unleashed crowd favourites like Baghdad and Devilution. Even in the few moments of impromptu jamming everything fell in to place brilliantly. When listening to High On Fire on record, it sounds excellent, but live these tracks have this heightened level of savagery. They rip through some tracks faster, and slow some tracks down, but whatever they choose at that given moment it always sounded perfect. A good example of this on the night was Snakes For The Divine which was played at a slightly slower tempo, making it sound about ten times heavier.
Watching Matt Pike seamlessly go from riff to riff proved to be an excellent preview for Sleep headlining Camden's Desertfest next year, but more than anything it left everyone in the venue desperately salivating over new material from High On Fire in the (hopefully very near) future.