What do you get when you combine bands like Motörhead and Black Sabbath and give it a bit of a sludgy sound reminiscent of Down? Why you get the next band on the chopping block which is High On Fire. Now this is a band that I had mostly heard of and had seen one time live prior to 2025. There are another band that I was able to catch on the 2025 Aftershock festival and they were pretty damn good. So I decided to put them on the chopping block and with that let’s take a look…….
The Art Of Self Defense- so I had heard that this band is a good example of the stoner metal sub genre and this album definitely proves that. I would say that this one is kind of slow and I really wasn’t expecting it to be as slow as it was. It also has kind of a bit of a blues sound mixed with the heavy stoner metal sound. Either way, I just thought this one was just ok and probably one that I wouldn’t really revisit anytime soon. I’ll give this one 8/10
Standouts: Baghdad, Last, Master Of Fists
Surrounded By Thieves- on here, the vocals seem I guess a little muted/muddied and the overall recording is just average at best but the riffs are pretty damn good. In fact, you might even say that this band would remind you of a Mastodon album. Fun fact, the guys in Mastodon met at a High On Fire concert and you can totally tell that they were influenced by this band. I’m gonna go ahead and give this album 8/10.
Standouts: Hung Drawn And Quartered, Nemesis, The Yeti
Blessed Black Wings- this one definitely steps things up a bit and by that I mean overall it just seems more cohesive. The songs aren’t quite as slow and draggy and it just feels more structured. I actually really like the riffage that is on here. There’s just something awesome about the slow crushing guitar riffs. I’ll give this album 9/10.
Standouts: Devilution, Anointing Of Seer, Blessed Black Wings
Death Is This Communion- I don’t wanna see this one picks up where the last one left off, but it sounds like a good continuation of the last album. One thing that I’m starting to notice is that this band clearly draws a lot of influence from bands like Black Sabbath. There’s just something that’s so catchy and so heavy about the guitar work and overall cohesion of this album. Matt Pike does kinda sound like Lemmy a little bit here and I did notice that there are elements of Zeppelin sprinkled throughout. Fun fact this was engineered by Jack Endino who has also worked with bands like Soundgarden and Nirvana. Anyway, nothing mind blowing or new but a great album nonetheless. I’ll give it 9/10
Standouts: Fury Whip, DII, Turk
Snakes For The Divine- OK so this is where I kind of first heard of this band and if I remember correctly, the title track had a music video that was always being played on Uranium. I think they were also touring behind this album when I saw them for the very first time. Either way, this is the album that I just started it for me. I believe this album has a theme that being that Adam and Eve were not the first people and Adam had a reptilian wife named Lilith. An interesting premise and I found out that this was produced by none other than Greg Fidelman who has produced albums for bands, like Slayer, Metallica, and Slipknot. I’ll give this album 10/10
Standouts: Frost Hammer, Ghost Neck, Fire Flood & Plague
De Vermis Mysteriis- this one is just a tad darker than the last album and I guess this is about what if Jesus had a twin that gave him life. It also explores things like time travel and overall this album has a very interesting theme/story. Now musically, it is a bit more of the same but this band can put out some really kinda heavy/big/chunky guitar riffs on top of some even heavier low end. I’ll give this album 9.5/10.
Standouts: Fertile Green, Spiritual Rights, Bloody Knuckles
Luminiferous- the thing with this album it doesn’t do anything super new or amazing but at the same time it sounds refreshing. I don’t know. I really can’t describe it, but it doesn’t feel tired. Now to some of this might be more of the same wash rinse repeat that in my opinion I don’t get that with this album. In fact, I would say that this is probably their slowest album yet. One cool thing that I found out about this and the last album we’re both produced by Kurt Ballou who has also produced albums by Converge. I’ll go ahead and give this album 8/10
Standouts: Carcosa, The Falconist, Luminiferous
Electric Messiah- fun fact about this one is that it’s a tribute to Lemmy and it’s the third album to be produced by Kurt Ballou. Anyway, this one does speed things up and continue in the same trend that we’ve heard on pretty much all of their other albums. I’ll go ahead and give this one 9/10
Standouts: The Witch And The Christ, God Of The Godless, Sanctioned Annihilation
Cometh The Storm- this is an interesting album because while it does have the same doom/stoner metal it also mixes Turkish folk and Middle Eastern music. I will say personally I found it to be just a little bit on the kind of draggy side of things. Like it’s a good album, but some of these songs just seem to go on and on. I feel like also they took off maybe three or four songs. This probably would’ve felt this long. Again, not a bad album but I would say it’s good not great. I’ll go ahead and give it 8/10.
Standouts: Sol’s Golden Curse, Burning Down, Hunting Shadows
As I said in my introduction if you’re a fan of obviously Black Sabbath or Down, then you’ll probably really really like this band. Now I will say that live they are awesome and I had a great time seeing them at Aftershock 2025. I feel like Matt Pike could easily be the front man for a Motörhead tribute band. Like he has that gruffness in his voice to make that happen. Now I’ve seen this band about three times and every time they were awesome so if you ever have a chance to catch this band live definitely do so.
Final Grade: A
Album Rankings:
- Snakes For The Divine
- De Vermis Mysteriis
- Death Is This Communion
- Blessed Black Wings
- Electric Messiah
- Luminiferous
- Cometh
- Surrounded By Thieves
- The Art Of Self Defense
Sinister Reviews 