High on Fire Talk Cometh the Storm, Extensive Riff Vault, and Band Reinvigoration
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The post High on Fire Talk Cometh the Storm, Extensive Riff Vault, and Band Reinvigoration appeared first on Consequence.
High on Fire were riding at peak altitude after nabbing a Grammy win for their 2018 album, Electric Messiah. Then shit hit the proverbial fan.
Frontman Matt Pike’s battle with diabetes and surgery to partially amputate a toe forced the long-running sludge metal act to halt activities and cancel tour dates. And then drummer Des Kensel left the band. Then the pandemic shut everything down.
It was during the first weeks of lockdown when the seeds for High on Fire’s next album were planted. Drummer Coady Willis (Big Business, Melvins) stepped in to complete the new iteration of the power trio, a move that the band’s go-to producer Kurt Ballou described as reinvigorating.
To these ears, the band’s new album, Cometh the Storm, is even better than Electric Messiah and the strongest and most varied High on Fire record since Snakes for the Divine. The overwhelming positive critical response to the record tends to back up that assumption — as does the apparent gratification of the members of High on Fire themselves.
Heavy Consequence sat down with all three — Matt Pike, bassist Jeff Matz, and new drummer Coady Willis — over Zoom to discuss the making of Cometh the Storm ahead of their spring US tour, which kicks off May 4th in Orlando, Florida (tickets available here).
You guys began writing material for the album during the early weeks of lockdown in 2020. How much of that made it on the final album, and how did the circumstances affect your creativity as a band?
Jeff Matz: The circumstances weren’t ideal, as far as getting together. Matt and I did some writing sessions, some long distance stuff. You’re just sending files back and forth and developing ideas on our own and then getting together and sort of integrating them. But it was definitely challenging working on music during that time as a band.
Matt Pike: As a band, yeah, I think we did a lot of stuff on our own. I wrote a lot of stuff and I played a lot, but yeah, getting together with people was a little bit difficult around here. It’s cool though, it worked out.
JM: As far as how much that stuff made it onto the record, there’s a few things that we were kicking around at that time that ended up being on the album. But some of the material on the album goes all the way back to say, like 2009, 2010 — digging deep into the rift vault.
MP: “Tough Guy”
JM: And “Lamb’s Bread,” the chorus to “Lamb’s Bread,” had that thing around forever. I feel like once we started jamming with Coady, that’s when a lot of the ideas that are on the album took shape and songs really started to come together.
This feels like the most varied High on Fire album since Snakes for the Divine. A lot of moving parts — even some Middle Eastern-style passages. Was it a conscious decision to build these songs this way or did it happen organically?
MP: We have this riff vault and it’s like a hundred different sessions of us just writing strange riffs, and then sometimes we’ll go back to that and take a good idea that really didn’t come to fruition and rewrite it so that it’s more playable. Some of those have other people drumming on them, Des and Chris … worked well for us for some of this stuff on this album for sure.
JM: It’s funny. Sometimes a riff needs to marinate for 15, 16 years before it’s ready, before it finds its place in a song. We try to document everything, always try to keep some kind of recording device on hand when we’re practicing. You never know when a good idea is going to fly by and you want to capture it. Whether it’s a phone recording or even just singing a riff.
MP: You gotta cook the chicken before you sell the chicken.
Coady Willis: It’s also hard when you’re writing by yourself and you’re coming up with ideas on your own. You have a riff and you’re listening to that riff and you’re evaluating it, how it stands by itself and what it is. Once you’re in a room together with the other guys and when everybody’s bringing something to the table, you have to tweak some stuff so that everybody has some room to sit.
And I think that’s what happened with a lot of these songs that started out as a cool idea where you hear this riff and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, this could be awesome.’ But until we get into a room together, we kind of have to tweak some stuff and move it around. So once we all got together, after sending files back and forth, I felt like stuff started to happen really quickly. The songs came together really fast, and it was obvious pretty quickly what needed to happen to make the songs work.
I’m fascinated by this riff vault… Coady, did you get to comb through it when you joined the band?
CW: I was granted passage to the riff vault. I got to go through it and figure some stuff out and see what these guys are thinking … it’s like, ‘Oh, this is cool. This could be like this.’ And you have an idea of what it could be. And then once we all get together, you’re like, ‘It’s obviously going to be this.’ That’s my favorite part of it. I like when everybody’s in the room together; it just makes things move a lot faster. You fit in where you need to. You get to where you need to go a lot quicker, I think, than sitting there and ruminating on it by yourself and second guessing yourself and trying to make every single part really awesome. Sometimes the bass needs to happen and you need to lay back a little bit, or sometimes the vocals need some space here, so you need to chill out.
MP: And then you conclude on all the ‘what ifs.’ It’s like putting the puzzle pieces to fit.
Your producer and engineer, Kurt Ballou, was quoted saying he thinks the lineup change ‘reinvigorated the band.’ Would you agree?
MP: Very much, very much so. Coady’s a fucking badass.
JM: Absolutely. I think it definitely reinvigorated us after we went through a pretty rough patch between Des leaving and the pandemic. It was really fresh and exciting when we started jamming with Coady. His drumming style and his creativity and positive attitude definitely made it exciting and fun to work on these songs. Super happy with how this album came out. Coady had a huge part in that.
CW: All three of us independently and everybody else in the world went through a lot during the pandemic, and as that was tapering off a little bit is when I joined the band… It felt like the world had changed. I felt, personally, I’d gone through a lot of changes since before the pandemic. So it felt like a chance to start fresh and start new and have this new beginning and this new thing. So I don’t think it was solely just the lineup change. It was a whole bunch of different factors coming together, just the world and our circumstances. And we have this chance to start fresh and do this new thing. Everybody came at it as, ‘This is a new beginning.”
Being that this album is your first full-length album post-Grammy win, did you feel any added pressure or urgency to deliver this time around?
MP: Not so much. It was like an honor to get that award, and it’s cool to have above my hearth. But we don’t strive to win an award. We strive to crush — with an album.
JM: It was a crazy unexpected thing that happened and a big honor, but it hasn’t really affected how we do things as a band. We do put a lot of pressure on ourselves to maintain a level of quality and always try to make something that’s at least as good, if not better than the last thing that we put out.
MP: That’s the hard part. Ever since Jeff joined and we had Death Is This Communion, we’re like, ‘Oh, how do we top that one?’ And then it’s Snakes for the Divine and it’s like, ‘How do we top that one?’ It’s been an ongoing strive to not put out shit. So many bands will do that. They’ll put out the greatest record ever. And then afterwards, you’re like, ‘Oh damn, what happened?’ We’re not doing that.
You’ve been working with Kurt Ballou for over a decade, and he’s since become the gold standard for modern heavy production. What about his work keeps you coming back?
MP: He really understands how this band should sound. And he’s hands-on creative with us. He’s not just an engineer; he’s a producer. He puts more into helping us with arrangements, with tones and sounds. He’s really good at getting drum sounds and he knows his studio very well.
JM: He’s got his studio super dialed. I feel like he just keeps getting better and better at his craft. Each subsequent album we do with him sounds better than the last. And he’s always trying new things, new mics, different techniques and outboard gear. But it always sounds like him; it always sounds like his production style. This album, I think he really outdid himself. This is, in my opinion, the biggest, heaviest sounding High on Fire record to date.
CW: On this session with Kurt, we did drums first. We spent like three or four days getting drum sounds, making sure that kit was tuned, trying different mics, trying different room setups. One of the things I appreciated about Kurt was he let me play like me. He tailored the recording setup to my style of drumming. … He came to a show and he kind of evaluated what I did and he set up accordingly, which I really appreciated.
But yeah, we would go through the songs and get the drums first. Everybody else is playing a direct-in, so there’s no amps. Playing in the room, but it’s an amp simulator. The amps are in the basement, so we’ll lay the tracks down and then go over once we have the drums where we want them. Then bass gets overdubbed, guitar gets overdubbed, vocals after that. We’re all playing together on the original take. It’s still, we’re in the same room and playing as a band.
MP: Right. You just have headphones. I jumped back and forth. If I think of a vocal part, we’ll have a vocal mic set up like when I’m doing overdubs. I’m like, ‘Let me do this real quick.’ ‘Cause you never know when you’re going to think of something, ‘I got to do this now or I’m going to forget,’ you know?
One last one for Matt: How you holding up health-wise?
MP: I’m doing good, man. I got the diabetes under control. Alcoholism and drug abuse are like a daily thing [I cope with]. … I’ve been doing a lot of art and talking to some people, and I’m going to be great. I’m going to be great on this tour and I’m ready for it. Just have a little more practice to do because these songs are always difficult at first, to go from being able to record to live shows. I’m just looking forward to getting back in the grind of things. I’m doing great.
Our thanks to High on Fire for taking the time to speak with us about their new album, Cometh the Storm. Stream the LP via the Apple Music player below, and pick up a physical copy at this location.
High on Fire Talk Cometh the Storm, Extensive Riff Vault, and Band Reinvigoration
Jon Hadusek
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