High on Fire: Electrifying Stoner Metal at Psycho Las Vegas, 2022

Share Tweet Share Share Share Save Mail

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Birthday

/ ( mm / dd )

Joined

(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';fnames[1]='FNAME';ftypes[1]='text';fnames[2]='LNAME';ftypes[2]='text';fnames[3]='ADDRESS';ftypes[3]='address';fnames[4]='PHONE';ftypes[4]='phone';fnames[5]='BIRTHDAY';ftypes[5]='birthday';fnames[6]='MMERGE6';ftypes[6]='text';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);

The good thing about attending a music festival like Psycho Las Vegas (besides wearing an all-access photographer pass around your neck) is the opportunity to discover bands you’re not familiar with. One such band was High on Fire (despite the fact that they formed way back in 1998, have released eight studio albums and earned a Grammy Award for “Best Metal Performance” in 2019). Yeah, I know.

High on Fire’s Matt Pike

Singer/guitarist/badass Matt Pike formed High on Fire with drummer Des Kensel and bassist George Rice after the breakup of his previous band, American stoner/doom metal outfit Sleep (who, by the way, I WAS familiar with). “The name came from the fact that [bassist] George is a big fan of ELO’s “Fire on High,” and he threw that out there for the hell of it, and we were like, “Nah, I don’t think so.” said former drummer Des Kensel in an interview with Westworld in 2010. “So Matt turned it around, and it became High on Fire.”

As guitarist, vocalist and lyricist for High on Fire, Pike has a raspy voice and proclivity for hard living [“By 14 I was doing drugs and stealing booze from my parents, throwing parties and getting into girls pants; all the things a shitty kid does.”]. Proclivities that have drawn many comparisons to the late Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister.

Pike in a 2018 interview with Heavy Consequence: “I had this dream where he came to me and he was pissed off at me. He was saying, “You’re trying to take my throne, boy!? You can’t do that!”

In 2012, Pike made his problems with addiction public as he dropped off the Rockstar Mayhem Festival during the summer and went into rehab for alcohol abuse. And as recently as 2019, the band announced via their Instagram that High on Fire would be cancelling their 2019 Electric Messiah tour because of Pike’s risk of losing his big toe or part of his foot, due to complications from diabetes.

Pike, now sober and minus one amputated toe (“Fuck it, good riddance! That toe caused me nothing but problems so fuck that thing.”*) credits medical marijuana, meditation and exercise as a means of curbing his predilection for booze.

As for Pike’s influences on guitar(*): “In terms of starting out, I always start out with [Tony] Iommi [Black Sabbath]. The church of the riff is the church of Iommi. He’s the blueprint and when you’re starting from scratch what’s the first thing you do? You look at the blueprint.”

Enjoy the photographs…