Walking down Massachusetts Avenue, it's hard not to miss the Middle East Restaurant and Nightclub. Outside the club last Wednesday night, for example, a few patrons smoked their last cigarettes, swapping stories of concerts past before going back inside. These concertgoers were aged, tattooed, pierced and clad in leather and black band T-shirts; they are the stalwart fans of metal who have lived through the genre's peak and fully appreciate its current resurgence. Such fans as these are hard-won but extremely loyal — and they were there for High on Fire.
High on Fire are possessed of that particular hazy-eyed heaviness that recalls Black Sabbath, laced with incendiary aggression and passion. A power trio in the truest sense of the phrase, frontman and guitarist Matt Pike's band has been developing a strong underground following since 1998. Last Wednesday night Pike, bassist Jeff Matz and drummer Des Kensel delivered an awe-inspiring set of pure rock fury to an avid audience, easily outclassing the rest of the lineup.
In the dark, grungy basement of the Middle East Downstairs, openers Bison B.C. fit right in with its road-worn amps, duct-taped bass and members' scraggly beards and long hair. Playing to the sparse crowd of 50 as if it were a thousand, the quartet performed its thrash-infused brand of heavy metal with great enthusiasm. But stage presence only goes so far; devoid of hooks but full of ubiquitous half-growl/half-scream vocals and down-tuned riffs, the music ultimately felt meandering and generic. Only when the musicians fell into a rare mid-tempo groove did they begin to show promise.
Black Cobra answered Bison's call to arms, besting the latter's efforts with a tighter performance and more cohesive, consistent tunes, all with only two members. Here, the drummer was the heart and soul, switching effortlessly between simple rock beats, tricky compound figures and measures of pounding double bass. The songs didn't lack for a second guitar thanks to their primarily chord-based style, but the overly technical guitarist's singular foray into slow, melodic soloing revealed poor vibrato and weak expression. Unfortunately, Black Cobra's performance also included unintelligible, monotone vocals.
While the show's first two bands took cues from the doom movement of the '90s, Priestess — perhaps best known for its Guitar Hero hit "Lay Down" (2006) — worships at the altar of Judas Priest and other classic metal acts from the '70s and '80s, and thus provided a breath of fresh air when it took the stage. Wielding the power of simple hooks, the verse/chorus format, dynamic instrumentation and the chops to back it up, the band's set was infinitely more accessible and downright fun set than those of the previous two.
Oddly, though the audience cheered heartily, there was little to no head-banging — nodding, at most. It is possible that the band's genre was a little too out of place among the others, but it is much more likely that audience members were eagerly anticipating the headlining band.
As High on Fire took the stage, it was greeted with a deafening roar and a sea of devil's horns extending from the front of the stage to the merchandise stand in the back. Pike and his bandmates greeted the crowd with a deafening roar of their own, diving into a new track aptly titled "Frost Hammer" — a song that beats any naysayers into submission. Not even three seconds into the song, a mosh pit had already formed and worked itself into a fevered frenzy. The band was a thunderous force, reaching the heights to which every opener aspired. Masterfully, it struck the right balance between heavy chords, dexterous licks, fast shredding and smooth melodic leads.
Pike proved himself to be not only a seasoned and exciting guitarist, but also an extremely charismatic frontman. He physically expressed the fury of the music in his interaction with the audience, all while delivering powerful, throaty vocals with great depth and inflection that recalled Motörhead's lead vocalist.
As a rhythm section, Kensel and Matz could not have been better or more airtight. When Pike's guitar briefly dropped out of the mix, the complex bass lines and pummeling drums proved every bit as interesting as the guitar work, a true genre rarity. This is a band at the height of its powers, poised to break free from underground obscurity and become a household name in metal.
