High On Life: an interview with High On Fire’s Matt Pike

Lead singer Matt Pike of stone-metal band High On Fire may have given up drink and drugs, but he still likes to deliver “that stoner sound”.
Interview by Andrea Manno

“I really enjoy classical and jazz” was the last thing I expected to hear from the frontman of a heavy metal band but High On Fire’s lead singer Matt Pike has no qualms in admitting his penchant for lots of Chopin and Beethoven.

“I need to have a lot of introverted ‘alone’ time for myself,” admits the singer, “for my own sobriety and for my own head. A lot of the time I’ll be in the mood for Slayer or Motörhead, but there are times where I’ll be in the mood for classical music.”

The admission slides of Matt’s tongue with ease and a chuckle that belies his otherwise gravelly tone on record, and I admit I’m still finding it difficult to comprehend when I play it up against the bellowing tones heard on all of High On Fire’s music.

It’s also incongruous to the heavy messages in the band’s songs. Lyrics like “They got us wired to the reptile brain… this world is insane” don’t exactly go hand-in-hand with symphonic tastes. Hence, on-stage, Matt and Co like to keep it hard.

In fact the noise these guys deliver has echoed far beyond the realms of their home turf in California where the band formed in 1998, content then to be categorised as ‘stoner metal heads’. They have played major metal events from the Mayhem Festival in Colorado to the dubiously named Relapse Contamination Fest in Philadelphia and will be hitting Australian shores next month to give us another taste of their way-loud rock.

While Matt admits that “50 to 75%” of High On Fire’s audience are often high themselves (on drink, on drugs, or a mix of both) he himself gave up the hard stuff years ago. That said, he refuses to be “one of those super-judgmental religious AA people”.

In a pre-reformed interview with metal site Pelecanus.net he said: “I was lost in that whole tour bus right there; now I’m starting to find out who I really am and what I’m worth. It kinda makes me sad that I blacked myself out for so long. No longer. I still smoke but I’m gonna quit these [indicating with the cigarette in his right hand] and then I’ll quit this [referring to the beer tinnie in front of him].”

Despite the reformation, the style of High On Fire remains definitively ‘stoner’. While it is common knowledge that the band enjoying paying homage to one of the greatest rock/metal acts of our time, Black Sabbath, the influences don’t stop there. Judas Priest also gets a look-in. As do Slayer. And Pink Floyd.

Which brings us full circle in the metal-versus-classical debate. After all, if it’s okay for the Floyd to see their music morph from rock to symphonic, who knows, maybe one day High On Fire will actually incorporate classical elements into their own tunes?

For now though, the volume is being turned up to full 11.

High On Fire will be playing The Rosemount Hotel in Perth on Wednesday 17 February. Tickets are available from www.rosemounthotel.com.au.