HIGH ON FIRE – Cometh The Storm

RELEASE YEAR: 2024

BAND URL: https://highonfire.bandcamp.com/

Admittedly, I have never been the greatest fan of the Californian sludge and stoner heavy metallers High On Fire (HoF), preferring their peers they influenced, Mastodon. To be perfectly honest (and I gave it plenty of time and patience) The Art of Self Defense²⁰⁰⁰, Surrounded By Thieves²⁰⁰², Blessed Black Wings²⁰⁰⁵ and Death Is This Communion²⁰⁰⁷, records fans consider legendary if not classics, I, for one, fall asleep to. Having said that, Snakes For The Divine²⁰¹⁰ (I once even owned on CD) and De Vermis Mysteriis²⁰¹² show a more refined songwriting and for that reason had been frequent guests in my car and house, as were Luminiferous²⁰¹⁵ and the Grammy winner Electric Messiah²⁰¹⁸ I reviewed HERE and HERE (both 5/6), where I praised the songwriting and the eclectic approach borrowing from thrash and death. This is why the nosedive HoF took with Cometh The Storm²⁰²⁴, released on April 19th via MNRK Heavy, just boggles the mind, and that sentiment is also shared by others such as Angry Metal Guy (2.5/5), Metalbite (7/10) and Metal Storm (7.41/10), as, while, of course, many others heap praises and even some call for a Grammy nomination, we struggle to understand what happened here.

It’s not like they sound like your grandpa’s teenage garage band as the album was immaculately produced by Kourt Ballou (that dude from Converge who saved Darkest Hour in 2017) and High On Fire at God City Studio in Salem, Massachusetts and mixed by Alan Douchess (the master of the Machine Head’s first two records.) It’s not that there’s no variety – Cometh The Storm²⁰²⁴ is probably the most varied record to date when you compare the slow foreboding and definitely way too long closer “Darker Fleece” with the thrashy “The Beating”, aptly named I might add, but the overall approach seems to be less is more. And at 57:42 with 11 tracks plus the necessity of playing it at least 4 times in the interest of fairness, the record is just too blasted long.

On one hand, we have excellent classic tracks such as the title track or “Trismegistus”, the Sepultura’s “Kaiowas” – like impressive instrumental “Karanlık Yoland” the supermelodic heavily Mastodonic “Hunting Shadows” so we know the only remaining founder, Matt Pike (guitars, vocals), Jeff Matz (2006-bass; 2007-bağlama), Coady Scott Willis (2021-drums) can still cut the mustard, but the opener “Lambsbread”, the slightly better “Burning Down” and pretty much all the rest, of which “Sol’s Golden Curse” is easily the least interesting, just utilize great riffs to no interesting ends in the name of new found minimalism. Again, why?

This happens to so many bands, even Mastodon. They start out promising, get excellent and then they lose their way. This is my grace extended to High On Fire: everybody gets one, as Spiderman says, so there, 0.5 extra point to what is a 4/6 disc, on the account of the aforementioned good tracks which are excellent. Hopefully, we will see a rebound in a few years. Not recommended but maybe for the most hardcore fans.