High on Fire
Snakes for the Divine
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Label: E1 Music
I’m not a pureblood metalhead- never was, never will be. Sure, I jammed out to Metallica in eighth grade and I own Into the Pandemonium on vinyl, but that’s normal, everyman stuff. As far as the jagged, underground tape-swapping scene goes, I’m pretty much useless. However I will say a truly, unequivocally great metal album will always have a more profound effect on me than even the most heralded efforts of the indie rock universe; there’s just something about its combustion – like it’s unafraid to stand above the masses, on a pedestal the self-serious demeanor of Sufjan and Oberst dare not approach – overlooking the blackened, war-torn world below, both defiantly and confidently howling, “I fucking rock.”
High on Fire, the Oakland trio who are probably best known for playing second-banana to Mastodon’s continent-crusading war machine, have spent their last three full-lengths coming progressively closer to that sort of brazen, unfuckwithable pinnacle – however, they’ve always been somehow withheld from true greatness. An overlong LP here, a few clunker tracks there – they’ve been one of modern metal’s most consistently good, but consistently frustrating collectives. However their latest, Snakes for the Divine, is both their most concise, and not coincidentally, the best thing they’ve ever recorded – an absolute rampage with some of the slickest instrumentation and staggering momentum of anything released recently, regardless of genre.
Snakes for the Divine is a metal-ass metal album – owing the vast majority of its influence to the classic shredding of Motorhead than the neo-drone clattering of Sunn O))) or Boris. There’s lots of guitar solos, double-bass breakdowns and the traditional cookie-monster vocals, just the way God (or Satan) intended. It’s an album that’s charmingly comfortable with its sources and, instead of trying to distance itself from familiarity, embraces the touchstones with relish – focusing the energy it could’ve spent vainly attempting to rewrite the rules of metal, on polishing what is there to a mirror shine. I mean, listen to the death-march stoner-jam of “Bastard Samurai,” the finger-breaking speed of “Fire, Flood & Plague,” or the sheer badassitude of “Frost Hammer;” listen and realize that although all of these songs, in some way, owe their existences to the fabled halls of metal godhood, they’re almost never played with this level of ferocity.
This leaves us with eight utterly unstoppable tracks that take no prisoners, drink blood and could probably crush your skull with their bare fingers, starting with a mind-boggling string-snapper and ending with a quick, wincing yelp. And honestly, isn’t that what metal is all about? Isn’t it supposed to make you feel invincible in the midst of your cockblocked adolescence? Isn’t that the reason we started playing this music in the first place? In a word, yes, but it’s hardly ever pulled off with this level of precision, and if you think something of this magnitude can be recreated without a hitch, there’s plenty of forgotten metal (and my garage band) to prove you otherwise. Let me put it this way, the last time I headbanged was probably during the summer of 2005- my favorite bands included Anthrax, Motorhead and of course, Twisted Sister – but during the late-album “How Dark We Pray,” I let a completely unironic session loose – I don’t think anything could be a better testimony for Snakes for the Divine than that.
by Luke Winkie
