Not Wagging But Drowning

Jat Storey

4 years ago

The last track on High On Fire Electric Messiah is just everything I love and live for in heavy metal all rolled into one, lit and smoked up. ‘Drowning Dog’ is the slowest and least heavy track on the album, by some distance. The lyrics aren’t the best either by Matt Pike’s lofty standards, a bit of a generic ‘kill or be killed’ we’re all doomed word soup.

And yet, and yet … there is craft and magic in the weave of the song, something that strikes to the very heart of the legions of fractured romantics and fantasists susceptible and unguarded enough to get off on this. Those of us attuned to such mountain ranges of guitars and emotion, all of us craving absolute power, purity and certainty in our music; knowing full well it can only be fleetingly attained. Form and feel.

‘Drowning Dog’ is the real deal, a brilliant guitar intro, vocals forced from a calloused throat and an incredible indelible bouncing riff that recalls Sabbath at their early finest*. I defy you to listen to it and not picture a mountain top, to not be on a mountain top.

Shirtless, obviously.

Electric Messiah was released in 2018, seemingly milliseconds after Matt Pike’s other band made their 19 year comeback with The Sciences. I think Electric Messiah is the much better LP, probably because I’m far more into caffeine than THC.

The LP cover throws us right into the whole AD&D, long untouched tombs of the elder gods, bastard sword wielding theatricality of all that can be unselfconsciously great about metal. It’s also objectively slightly crap, but I abandoned objectivity 5 paragraphs ago.

How do you like ‘Spewn From The Earth’ as an opening statement of intent? It is right up in your grill from the first second onwards, no intro, no time to brace yourself, just relentlessness in excelsis. Des Kensel’s drumming somehow manages to combine a blistering number of beats with a real roll.

‘Steps Of The Ziggurat/House Of Enlil’, is a fittingly monolithic 9-minute slab of density. There are times I just cannot fathom how a trio can make so much noise, this track swings with some of the very heaviest on Ufomammut’s Ecate. Although the band leaven the unadulterated gravity of the track with some interesting instrumental passages, so its not too painful.

The title track of Electric Messiah is a tribute to Lemmy. Fittingly it is probably the fastest cut on the album**, Jeff Matz bass playing truly hitting the heights here. This swings faster and stronger than anything any of our superannuated ‘Big 4’ have served us up in thirty years. It’s a rager.

All give praise as the ace hits the stage
All are amazed at the cards that he played
My homage paid to the king in his grave
He's playing bass & he's melting your face

For once I am glad that Electric Messiah is a double album, granting a little respite between the sides. I need it, which may mean I am unworthy recipient of High On Fire’s dark communion, or just protective of my hearing.

The track ‘Sanctioned Annihilation’ is basically the sound of an orcish war of destruction raging across your cochlear nerve, albeit with some great instrumental flourishes and a boss-level guitar solo.

Electric Messiah is not a flawless album by any shake of the flail, a couple of the tracks do run into each other and are hard to distinguish between by the time you run towards the end of the LP; although I am quite happy to admit that might just be attrition, this is a 56-minute album.

The last track is quite good too, but I may have already mentioned that.

High On Fire really hit us hard on Electric Messiah, I have a lot of time for the none-denser doom stylings of their early works^ but the band are a different, more honed beast by this point. All three members play out of their skins throughout and big credit needs to go to producer Kurt Ballou for corralling all this heaviosityness into a coherent listen, never too distorted or blurred by its own weight.

Rage on.