It's Official: Earholes Hate Brooklyn Masonic Temple

The last forty-eight hours have created a near legendary status for one New York City music venues, placing it in the echelon of other timeless joints like Max’s, CBGB’s, Irving Plaza-the music places that people like us in the Midwest dream and imagine about.

The venue-the Brooklyn Masonic Temple-has consistently booked hard rock shows for some time now, proving to be a very heavy-friendly venue with some very heavy-friendly qualities.

Yes it seems the Temple’s high ceilings, grubby interior and cool lineage all bow well for metal lineage-but the other bonus is that the venue is independently booked and is not subjected to normal regulations.

In other words, band can play at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple and be as loud as humanly possible.

It is an ideal spot for any band that likes to test the boundaries of hearing loss.

But for the last couple of days, a pair of bands have come through the doors of the Temple and tested the lawfulness of volume.

These aren’t normal purveyors of metal and hard rock; these are bands that are so aggressively loud that a potential to cause audiences to involuntarily shit themselves.

It started with Japan’s ultimate power trio took the stage with Ian Astbury. Since I’m completely smitten with The Cult’s Love album and equally gushing about Boris’ Pink, this match-up is heavenly.

According to the Village Voice’s Sound In The City blog, the power trio plus sometimes Jim Morrison impersonator was so loud that they continually blew the power out at the Temple. In fact, the band finally gave up during their sonically destructive version of The Doors’ “The End,” right as Ian was channeling his inner Jimbo.

The sound crew finally got things in order just in time for planet Earth’s heaviest band ever to hit the stage. The band rarely plays anything about 1,000 kHz, so when their guttural assault was underway, a crew of NYC’s finest came through the doors and literally pulled the plug themselves. Reports indicate that the material was so brutal that most in attendance were too destroyed to protest the man’s decision to end the festivities.

But wait, there’s more.

On the following night, the reunited Sleep came through and provided another night of high volume drama. From the Voice reporter’s account, you could hear even the opening band’s output from several blocks away and it was even louder when Matt Pike took the stage.

No cops were called and no fuses blown, but Sleep’s performance created a trifecta of volume that was seemingly unmatched in New York’s storied history.

And with that much sonic damage taking place, the Brooklyn Masonic Temple has secured its own place in NYC rock history and the venue that dared to make everyone’s earholes bleed.

High On Fire Gabe's Gig

There is a nasty rumor circulating that High On Fire will be playing at the legendary Gabe’s Oasis in what will more than likely be a hot ‘n sweaty sausage fest of metal. As reported earlier, Snakes For The Divine is so good that High On Fire should be playing in a large theatre or auditorium, we’ll take the intimacy of a small club, which will have us all smelling like a sweaty armpit.
But who’s going?
Raise your hand if you’re sure!

High On Fire - Snakes For The Divine

High On Fire has been amassing a catalog of good metal albums-each one getting better than the last one-but there was a growing concern that maybe the band didn’t have that great album in them. It has been three years since the band’s last effort-Death Is This Communion-and for a band that makes their bread and butter on the road like High On Fire, I began to wonder just what the band was doing with their seclusion.

The answer is secretly creating their first truly great album.

Snakes For The Divine was totally worth the wait, and it only takes seconds into the first track-an eight-minute long title track, no less-before you realize it. Vocalist/guitarist Matt Pike has used the time off the road to streamline High On Fire’s already enviable approach to metal onto an aural pallet that should appeal to long-time supporters and novice metalheads.

Producer Greg Fidelman-yes, the same guy that turned Death Magnetic into a migraine-inducing ball of compression-is the man responsible for helping High On Fire achieve what Steve Albini and Jack Endino could not do: capturing the band at the height of their aggression in the studio. He worked similar magic with Slayer’s World Painted Blood, but Snakes For the Divine may be the more impressive handiwork for Mr. Fidelman. With Slayer (and even Metallica), there were royal achievements to strive for. With High On Fire, he has pushed them to a category where you can now place the band in the same breath as those legendary acts without enduring eye-rolling glances from metal purists or the inevitable lift from the hot air blown out of indie elitists.

This is metal achieved the old-fashioned way: double-kick drums (a first for HOF), a bass guitar sound that can crush concrete, Pike’s larynx raping vocals, and tunes about motherfucking samurais.

For real: when I first saw the track listing for Snakes For The Divine, I chuckled at the title “Bastard Samurai,” but as soon as I heard Pike slow burn to the chorus of “sunnavabitch should bleed awhiiiillle!!” I knew this shit was as real as it gets.

There’s more too: “Holy Flames Of The Fire Spitter” comes with a gnarly “Hoo Ha!” chant, “Frost Hammer” proves that you can never have too many songs about Vikings, and then there’s the obligatory religious swipe of “How Dark We Pray.” It’s all here, it’s all great, and it comes packaged inside some totally killer album art.

With Pike approaching forty, Snakes For The Divine almost sounds like he’s just now beginning to focus his attention on the legacy he wants to leave for the world of metal. That makes all of the aforementioned clichés so inviting, because even as his head is clearly looking for new ways to clear-cut a path to metal infamy, his heart is still tied to the genre’s history of escapism.

But what probably is my favorite aspect of Snakes For The Divine is that it really isn’t that different from the approach that the band has been taking all along, it’s just a lot better. While bands like Baroness and Mastodon have a virtual chokehold on technical, progressive-infused metal, High On Fire finally proves that you can achieve similar brilliance with three simple words: loud fast rules.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

High On Fire - Death Is This Communion

More than anything, you have to admire High On Fire frontman Matt Pike’s stoic dedication to the stoner metal ethos. His work within this Oakland power trio essentially is a continuation of the formula he already helped perfect during Sleep, a band who’s sludge is revered enough that they’re rightfully cited as one of the most important metal bands in the past quarter century.
Add that body of work along with the four albums he’s done with High On Fire, and you’ve got nearly two decades of fairly devoted shit-hot magma rock.
Don’t think for a moment that Pike is a dimwitted stoner still trying to work the mojo of a genre that’s not too kind towards middle ground or middle aged. Instead, he’s tackled his mid-thirties with an almost religious devotion to his craft and a keen eye on maintaining an underground credibility. There’s something very calculated about hiring Steve Albini man the boards for their last album, Blessed Black Wings, while tapping legendary Seattleite Jack Endino to direct their latest effort.
But when you think about it, Endino may have been the best choice ever when they started making Death Is This Communion. He’s helped harness some of the best Sabbath worshippers in the Northwest and it wouldn’t surprise me if Pike has a lot of Endino produced records in his own collection.
So yeah, the match-up delivers: Endino’s work on Death Is This Communion is a great compliment to the band’s musicianship and vision. It’s the band’s finest document, and one in which newcomers should begin with.
At the same time, the pairing also serves as a reminder to an era when there were at least a dozen or so bands that mined the same sludge fields. High On Fire has the luxury of having a fairly substantial grip on the whole smart man’s larghetto rock, so it stands out to an extent. But for those who remember grunge’s halcyon days, you can probably name about five or six bands that sounded strikingly similar to High On Fire, with one obvious difference: Page’s outfit is refined, intentional, and occasionally unmemorable.
Even though the land that they navigate is full of additional exploration, H.O.F. focus all of their implements on plowing through Saint Vitus grooves with a top soil of Celtic Frost lyricism. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s certainly been done before and it certainly won’t win them an audience much wider than what Saint Vitus or Celtic Frost experienced during their own formative years.
On rare occasions, namely the first minute of “Cyclopian Scape” and the entire two-and-a-half minute passage “Khanrad’s Wall,” in which Pike uses a Middle Eastern chord progression to create a nifty acoustic landscape, the band displays brief hints of growth and experimentation. “DII” even puts a mellotron to good use underneath the relentless ‘chug-chug-chug’ of Pike’s guitar.
But these diversions are the exceptions and not the rule, which is a polite way of saying that it’s another High On Fire album when it could have been a High On Fire statement, one that shakes the genre from its constraints just like Pike did with Sleep’s Dopesmoker.
The riffage is incredible and it’s mixed high enough that you can almost overlook the fact that Pike’s vocal duties carry an enormous weight but very little in terms of real power. Think Lemmy Kilminster with, perhaps, even fewer fluctuations in his register, and you then get an idea of how fatigued I felt after listening to Death Is This Communion from start to finish.
Ok. We get it. High On Fire is as primal and devoted as ever, but usually by the fourth album we’re seeing some evidence of growth and challenge. It’s time for them to breathe some new life into drop-D deconstructionism because there are moments when Death Is This Communion sound like rigor mortis is setting in.

High On Fire is appearing at The Picador Monday, February 18th. Be there. Bring earplugs.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.