High on Fire - Snakes for the Divine
February 18 2010 at 12:37:29 PM
What a goddamned awful High on Fire record. There’s nothing to like about this fifth full-length, Snakes for the Divine, not even the two-bit fanto cover art. What remains is Matt Pike’s tiresome Lemmy impression, front and center, illuminated by a complete inability to convey anything but passing-a-Mini-Cooper-through-his-shitter pathos. Every song swathed in the same schema: Ball-aching growls “compete” with drummer Des Kensel’s yawning mid-paced blah.
The program's obvious intent -- huffin’ it over mountains to swipe marauder gold from ice caverns rife with Githyanki and Frost Giants -- never materializes. Try to erase the stubborn picture of group therapy sessions full of tatted, steel-haired guys smoking Pall Malls and sipping Folgers, chatting up how long they’ve stuck it out with the methadone. No, I never liked “reality” television.
What a moody, cantankerous blast of ennui... Songs take far too long to get their bearing and then flail about listlessly, content with grand declarations of emotional quagmire received in wholly disconnected and unfounded ways – sorta like a dog flipping through a Time magazine photo special on the Haiti earthquake devastation.
The greatest crime here is Pike’s guitar. Long his most appealing weapon, the axe is blunted, inexcusably dressed down by an indifferent and destructive mix. Propulsive, fanged riffs gone fruity is a disease I never figured this guy to present. But the world’s rife with disappointment. Aint it? People predisposed to praise this transformation likely cower from Albini’s fist-to-the-nuts production style – and Blessed Black Wings’ (exquisite) brand of tunes. That’s fine. Most folks need another underachieving bullshit band whose total artistic ambition consists in “playing epic tunes, brah.”
[Stewart Voegtlin]
High on Fire
Snakes for the Divine
E1 Music
2010
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SftD doesn't even sound like HoF to my ears. Sounds more like HoF trying to do Oceanic-era Isis, but with a tin-earred "engineer."
The real SftD is a solid HoF album. Not their best, but really not THAT much different from the others.
Unfortunately, yes, I listened to the "right"/"real" album. And, yes, it really is that different from BBW, which is a masterpiece.
Saviours is an underachieving bullshit band, the Sword is an underachieving bullshit band, HoF are a hard working heavy metal band that have given us by my count 3 great records ("art of" was good but not great imho).
Only classifying this specific record as the particular yield of what-it-is-to-be an "underachieving bullshit band."
Anyone who has determined this record sounds "like every other HoF record" needs to get the dicks out of their ears.
It's perfectly OK to be let down by your heroes, kids. Not the end of the world. You can even tweet about the emotional discomfort said band has caused you. So do it.
The Art of Self Defense is the only one that sounds like a true expression of something real, and not an blatant attempt to be cartoon metal.