Matt Pike of High On Fire

by Greg Prato

There was a time when the "double live album" was an eventual requirement of any established rock band - and also served as a commercial breakthrough for countless artists (Peter Frampton, Kiss, etc.). But ever since its '70s peak, the format has largely become a dead dinosaur.

Bay area bashers High On Fire - comprised of singer/guitarist Matt Pike, bassist Jeff Matz, and drummer Des Kensel - look to rekindle the double-disc-live-set flame, with the arrival of Spitting Fire Live: Vol. 1 & 2, which was recorded at two New York City venues: the Music Hall Of Williamsburg and the Bowery Ballroom. Certainly one of the heaviest live albums ever released, the set documents what fans have known for years: that High On Fire is a simply killer live act.

High On Fire's song lyrics run the gamut, as they've touched upon everything from conspiracy theories ("Rumors of War") to weed ("Fertile Green") over the years - which Matt discusses in greater detail below - as well as telling us about getting caught in two separate natural disasters.
Greg Prato (Songfacts): Let's talk about the new live album, Spitting Fire Live. I can honestly say it's the heaviest live album I've heard in quite some time. Would you also agree with that statement?

Matt Pike: Yeah, I do. It was kind of a process. I've never made a live album that we got to correct some of the stuff in the studio by re-amping. It was an interesting project to take on, and I think it's very heavy. It's an awesome record.

Songfacts: And I would take it that there was no overdubbing on it or anything?

Matt: I didn't overdub, no. There was re-amping, though, and there were some vocal things where I had to go in and kind of help the vocals out, because sometimes when you're singing and playing guitar, your mouth goes further away from the microphone and closer. So there were some little edits that I had to help the song out a little with, because part of the verses are loud, part of the verses are quiet, so you have to deal with volume control issues. There are little things like that you can do in the studio when you re-amp and you have DI signal and stuff like that, that you can enhance the recording. So it doesn't sound like just all over the place. It wouldn't be very enjoyable then.

Songfacts: What made the band decide to record the two nights in NYC?

Matt: Well, because there was a mobile recording unit that went back and forth between the two shows and we wanted to record more than one show. And if we're on tour - Wednesday we're in Savannah, Georgia, and then the next night we're in Norfolk, Virginia - it would be hard; then we'd be dealing with two different companies. So it made it easy just to have a mobile recorder go back and forth.

And we always play two shows in New York, and we always play our best in New York. Usually it's halfway through the tour and we're really excited about the shows, because we have such a huge fan base there. So it was good for energy and good for convenience.

Songfacts: Why do you think live albums were so popular in the '70s?

Matt: Because if it's a good one, there's nothing like a live show, the feel of a live show. Because you're interacting with people. And when you just go in and record an album, you're very inside your own head. When you're out there and you're playing to the fans, you have a different feel about it. You can kind of feel what was going on. There's a different feel live. You feel the energy of the crowd and the energy of the players, everybody involved. So that's the difference with the feel to it.

Songfacts: What are some of your favorite live rock albums from other bands?

Matt: Oh, I definitely like the Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet one [Live Bullet]. One of my first records was a Kiss record, Alive!. I like that Slayer Decade of Aggression and, God, there's so many live records I like. Recently with technology and computers you can get all sorts of live stuff.

Songfacts: One of my favorite live albums from the '70s is Live and Dangerous by Thin Lizzy. Are you familiar with that one?

Matt: Oh, yeah. That's an awesome one. I love Thin Lizzy. And also the Sabbath one [Live at Last, later reissued as Past Lives]. I've known about that since Al Cisneros [singer/bassist for Sleep] and I were accumulating videotapes through the mail, and Al got this one that was Black Sabbath Live in Paris, and this was before the whole Ozzy documentary came out and he just had all these crazy Sabbath live videotapes and recordings and stuff like that. I always liked Band of Gypsies, a great Hendrix record. There are so many of them.

Songfacts: I agree. And then something I find very interesting that the band was in New Zealand and also Japan when they both had their separate earthquakes.

Matt: It was pretty crazy. We were with the Melvins, too, and it was really heavy. All of us had a little PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. I don't know, at that time it felt like we were all going to die, like we couldn't escape it. Yeah, it scared the shit out of me.

Songfacts: I can imagine.

Matt: I don't like earthquakes very much anymore. I don't think I ever did, anyway. But I should have played the lottery that week. What are the chances of two different earthquakes on your tour?

Songfacts: Who are some of your favorite songwriters?

Matt: Looking back, God, there's so many of them, it's hard to say. I always really liked the way Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi put together Sabbath. I always liked Led Zeppelin, and I really liked Pink Floyd. Those big three were definitely big influences as a kid. And I can go as far as saying I always liked listening to thrash: Metallica and Slayer, Exodus, and a lot of this I grew up on. And Circle Jerks and Black Flag and the way that punk is arranged.

I went to school, just community college, to brush up on my music theory and to take jazz and jazz theory and the way jazz improv is put together. And a combination of all that stuff makes up what I do now. Some of the fusion stuff I'm into, like John McLaughlin or Al Di Meola or the weird prog albums, Jeff Beck. They make up what I do with my personal playing ability and songwriting.

Also, as far as me as a songwriter, you've always got to have a rhythm section that you get along with. It's really hard to write music without you being able to put it down with drums and the drummer having an opinion without a bass player there to have an opinion on the intervals and chord work and things that are important to the texture of the music and the mood of the music: Is it fast? Is it slow? Is it in fours? Is it in threes? You need a couple of people to take part in this big puzzle that you start putting together.

Because it's a process. I suppose lots of people just write a song and that's it and that's that and it's like one guy. For me, it's a development of a bunch of people working together. So it's not just me writing the songs, although lyrically I tend to be the most dominant of the vocal parts. But I definitely bounce off of them to my rhythm section and they definitely have a say in what I do. I want everybody to enjoy it and put their two cents in when it comes down to what we're all playing and what we're all going to enjoy playing.

Songfacts: As far as songwriting, is there a set formula that you follow?

Matt: Well, I think that bands develop habits and certain sounds and techniques that work for them. But we're always trying to change things a little bit. We have different formulas, like A part, A part, B part, B part was the head over the top of it more. But we try to experiment with different things in High On Fire. A lot of it's experimenting with timing and different drumbeats, so I can write a riff and play it five different ways with the drums being different every time. We can change the time signature and the way we play it - triplets or just in fours - there's a lot of different ways to play the same thing and make it sound different. So we're constantly developing that as we go along and which one sounds the best, which one's favored. It's a process.

Songfacts: Let's talk about some specific High On Fire songs. Let's start with the song "Fertile Green."

Matt: That's the part in the story where Balteazeen, our hero of the story, goes to an oracle. The oracle was based off a legend in Celtic folklore; it was a thing called the Green Man, and he comes out of the ground. Well, I made it a female. If you know anything about growing weed, the females are the small buds. You put the males in with the female, they fertilize them, you throw the male ones away.

So I say, "Sacrifice males undone. Strength to kill what's been called unsung." It's about growing weed, but it's also about a folklore legend and it's also about Balteazeen having to give the male baby to become the weed. She takes the baby and the weed for information about him to further his quest.

That song's a portion of the whole story. When we were writing it, I just made that up off the cuff and then words. And then we got halfway through the song and towards the middle of it me and Jeff started developing the riff and we just put it together like that, and it turned out pretty good.

Songfacts: And it's a pretty wild video for that song, too.

Matt: His name's Phil Mucci [the video's director]. I basically told him what I told you in a little more detail, and gave him the lyrics and explained to him what the lyrics were about. He took that and kind of ran with what visually I told him I wanted to see, and what his opinion was about seeing that. He hired the actors, directed it. And between the both of us it became a really good video. His visuals were stunning. He's awesome. So, yeah, I just bounced an idea off another artist and we went from there.

Songfacts: And what about the song "Rumors of War"?

Matt: "Rumors of War," the Bush administration was going on and the war was starting and I just felt like politicians and the way the media gets people to believe in this bullshit agenda, that we have to be there. I believe the two towers coming down was set up and funded so that we would have an excuse to war on Iraq, Afghanistan, all the things we've been invading, the whole Middle East that has to do with oil. It's about the military brainwashing evil oil men that empower and gain political office and how long it's been set up so that things fall into play for the administration and how they set it up for that administration to go to war. So that's what the whole thing is about.

And I reflected it off of the Bush administration because that's where I got the idea. Not like it hasn't happened in the past in different ways, like Vietnam. It's just every warrior needs an excuse to go to war and what better excuse than ones that you make yourself. So it's a conspiracy theory, so to speak, too.

Songfacts: And what about "Hung, Drawn and Quartered"?

Matt: That song was based off one's own conscience. It's inciting liberation, and it's inciting almost a rebellion against seeing the world and the way we are and the things going on in it, and empower ourselves to be warriors and stand against and stand for what you believe in instead of just falling prey and victim to the media and the government that we surrender to so often. I just believe it needs to be shaken and it needs to be re-tilled and rewritten. I just think everything's awry, and everybody falls victim to the deviant to Walmart. It's like a wake up call, so to speak.

Songfacts: And looking back at all the High On Fire albums, what album are you most proud of?

Matt: Well, it's hard to say. All of them. I mean, every album we've seen ourselves as a group evolve. This last one, it wasn't work. Blessed Black Wings, Death is This Communion, the current De Vermis Mysterious, those are my favorite three that we've done, and they were really on hard. But the first one [The Art of Self Defense] is classic and it gave us a footing, it gave us where we knew what we were doing.

Surrounded by Thieves, I love the music on it. I really wish that we had mastered it and recorded it a little different - I think it's a little too muddy. But I love the songs on it, I love the playing on it. I just never really liked the way the production came out on that one, so I've always wanted to go in and remix it and remaster it. But I haven't gotten around to that yet.

Songfacts: And as far as the future for the band, is there talk about working on a new studio album?

Matt: Well, I'm trying to get us all together and find a direction. I have some really good ideas on which way I want to go and the way I want to write. And what I want to put together is a really big production that I don't want to talk about quite yet. I'm not sure that's the direction we will be going in, but if we do, it's going to be really amazing and I think people are going to really love it. But unfortunately, like all good things, it requires a lot of money to make. So I'll leave it at that. [Laughing]

July 9, 2013
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