Get In The Fucking Pit

Fuck. What a gig. I haven't left a venue totally drenched in sweat like that for years. It's certainly been many years since I've been carried off by such a pure outpouring of blazing, molten pure fucking violent rock power.

High On Fire are a damn well named band, the musical equivalent of a pyroclastic flow, laying waste to everything in their path like the unholy bastard sons of Celtic Frost and Motorhead they are. Matt Pike was, as ever, awesome. No one plays guitar like this man, or gurns like him either (go read You Need A Mess Of Help's blog for a wonderful description of Mr Pikes facial foolishness). He seems to be blessed with the ability to play two riffs simultaneously, has a roaring, razor-edged guitar sound that could knock out a bull elephant from a hundred paces and bellows the words like a californian Cronos with third degree piles. Allied to a rhythm section that grooves in a stranger way than else in metal (excepting Om) and can bend time like no other I've heard he's fucking unstoppable. And fuck, that rhythm section. The massively deep, fuzzed out growl of Joe Preston's bass locked into the rolling, roiling thunder of Des Kensal's drumming propels High On Fire's hypnotic riffology onto another level altogether. Time changes abound, but there's not a hint of prog to them, riffs mutate or seemingly reverse themselves at the flick of a cymbal (check the intro to Devilution for an amazing example of this). It fucks with yr head, bar lines and time signatures become fluid but they never, no matter how fast they get, descend into wank. Fuckin' wonderful.

Then Mastodon. An eight armed psychotic prog-metal juggernaut who are about the only band who could follow High On Fire, and almost blew them off the stage the last time I saw them both. Mastodon have no shame at all. Ludicrously complex, but with an ear for hooks most groups would kill for, plus they can pummell out a galloping thrash riff like no ones business and somehow get away with NWOBHM guitar harmonies without sounding shit or like they're taking the piss, and I normally hate that crap. But because they do it with such shameless abandon, it works. Plus, they are total jerks onstage, guitars held triumphantly aloft after only one song, the guitarist who looks like catweazel and the bass player had what I can only describe as a beard-off. Like staring each other out, only with beards. This is the sort of behaviour I like to see. Everywhere you look, necks are snapping to the Christian Vander on crack drumming of Brann Dailor. The man is fucking terrifying, effortlessly switching between time signatures, from full on blasting death to a swinging, jazz inflected groove with seemingly no effort. Tight isn't a strong enough word for this lot, you couldn't wedge a silver rizla into the gaps...

As each song went by, the pit got bigger. The they played Megalodon. We were all at the edge of the pit at that point, headbanging furiously. As the weirdly countryfied guitar harmony bit ended and the best thrash riff ever kicked in the pit erupted. There was only one course of action. Fucking dive right in and get into some syncopated good time violence. A proper old-style moshpit, no SxE or toughguy UKHC wankers doing that fucking kung fu crap, just a fuckload of people off their tiny minds on some of the most vital music around reacting in the most gloriously basic way. It's been a fair while (to put it mildly) since I've got in the pit, and I'd almost forgotten how much sense it makes when music hits you like this.

It was an astounding performance. I've never heard utter virtuousic precision groove like this did. Aside from the aforementioned Megalodon and Crusher Destroyer, the one thing I was really hoping they would play was their version of The Bit by The Melvins. And they did, the announcement of the title alone provoking a large amount of excitement in both myself and at least one of my companions. I think there may have been jumping up and down with glee. Mastodon then pinned the fucker to the wall and preceded to hammer the shit out of it, making the original sound pedestrian in comparison. I think it was about this point that I probably injured myself.