High On Fire

Electric Messiah

The return of Riffmaster Pike and pals. Few bands generate the kind of overpowering din that has become High On Fire’s trademark. Matt Pike is rightly revered as one of our finest living exponents of the riffmaster’s art and there’s a sense that his well-oiled power trio could churn this stuff out ad infinitum without too much effort. What makes Electric Messiah such a joy – its goofy cover art and underlying salute to Lemmy aside – is how Pike and his comrades have almost casually upped the ante, delivering their heaviest, most memorable and most wildly animalistic material to date.

The title track and Spewn

From The Earth are the most punishing speed-metal ragers High On Fire have produced to date, while grotesque, undulating epics such as Steps Of The Ziggurat/House Of Enlil and the genuinely disorientating Sanctioned Annihilation take the band’s trademark wall of dissonance to new heights of skull-shattering fury. This is real heavy metal thunder.

Dom lawson