This first appeared on Splice Today. It’s part of a week long Metal Apocalypse.
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Metal has always been an uneasy critical sell. Too uptight to be rootsy, too formulaic to be arty, too earnest to be clever, and too remorselessly sexless to be sexy, metal has droned, trudged, and howled its own way between rockists and poptimists, occasionally hailed by one or the other, but never exactly embraced by either.
So it makes perfect sense that High on Fire is the critically validated metal It band of the moment—since, in most ways that matter, the group isn’t really a metal outfit at all. Oh, sure, High on Fire has many metal trappings. The songs are long, loud, and prog-inflected. The vocalist growls as much as sings. There are guitar solos.
But despite all that, High on Fire’s energy is not metal. It’s punk. More specifically, it’s metal-tinged pop punk, in the vein of Guns N’Roses or Nirvana or all those grunge bands that critics loved because beneath the thin metal veneer they were actually trying to be rootsy, or arty, or clever, or sexy, or some combination thereof.
You can hear High on Fire’s actual sympathies in the opening title tune, with the repetitive, fist-shaking chorus (“Rise up! Fall down!”) that gets lodged in your brainstem like an overcarbonated bleacher cheer. You can hear it in the emotive sincerity with which Matt Pike emotes like a cross between Eddie Vedder and a constipated pachyderm on “Bastard Samurai.” And you can read it in that damn name: High on Fire. That’s an inspirational slogan for your mildly edgy corporate event, damn it—it’s not a metal band.
Metal is about being ground into anonymity beneath a giant iron heel. Punk’s about raging against the machine. The latter is in general the option more likely to wow a cultural arbiter, since people, or at least critics, like to feel that they’re fighting the power rather than being devoured by it. And, you know, if you’re creative, smart, and funny—like the Dead Kennedys, or Motorhead, or even Nirvana—fighting the power can be really entertaining and worthwhile. High on Fire, though, has neither the wit of great punk nor the remorselessness of great metal. Instead it’s just lumberingly literal adrenal rush; music by which to run on your treadmill or invade a sovereign nation, or shout “Shit yeah!” while drinking yourself into a stupor.
Which is fine, I guess. But I wish they wouldn’t call it metal.
With an album cover like that, no way it’s not going to be called metal. Yngwie Malmsteen, FTW!
There shouldn’t be any sex on a metal album cover, damn it. Only corpses, Satanism, and bleak landscapes.
There have to be some standards.
In order words, Slayer yes, RATT no!
Nah, that’s not right; Ratt’s great.
If High on Fire sounded like Ratt, I’d be happy. They sound like new Metallica, though. Barf.
Uhhh… Dokken?
For the life of me, I can’t even remember most of Ratt’s first few albums even though I had them as a teenager. I sure dug those Milton Berle cameos in their videos though.
“Round and Round” is a great song. Damn it.
your little metal box is artfully articulated but needlessly narrow.
The prohibition against “sexiness” is baffling, too. From it’s inception, all the way through the British New Wave until American Death and Second-wave European BM, heaps of metal has traipsed itself in its own version of joyless, mechanical sexuality. It’s not very fun or interesting or all that “sexy” but it is sex, like a Frank Frazetta pin-up.
Who DOESN’T want to fuck to King Diamond?
NWOBHM is definitely swaggery and sexy; it’s very classic rock. What American Death metal are you thinking of though that’s particularly interested in sex, even as a joyless effort? Or Black Metal? The lyrical obsessions are mostly corpses and Satanism, not fucking. Folks like Cannibal Corpse do occasionally stray into rape and necrophilia fantasies…but compared to any pop, or even to punk, the disinterest in sex and gender difference is pretty hard to miss.
Frank Frazetta is waaaaay different. He’s obsessed with female bodies and with pedestrian rape fantasies in a very pulp way. What death or black or doom metal or even thrash are you thinking of that does that?
until.
* or rather, metal had a sexualized element UNTIL the advent of extreme metal in the late 80s.
Sure, that makes sense…though I might put it a little earlier.
I think for me metal basically becomes metal with thrash, death, et al. Heavy metal is something somewhat different (and hair metal is different also….)
Just to be clear, High on Fire isn’t crap because it’s not metal. Lots of good things are not metal. High on Fire is crap because it’s crap.
You’ve got to be kidding me. High On Fire is the most in your face aggressive sounding metal band today. Snakes for the Divine was mostly a thrash album thanks to the production and partly because of the bassist, but it’s still metal. It’s not punk, it’s not pop metal, it’s metal, no bullshitting. Whoever wrote this needs to pull their head out of their ass. And fuck Noah Bershitsky.