High on Fire

Interview: Salem metalcore vets Converge send home the guests for an explosive new album

This content appears in ALARM #40. Subscribe here to get your copy!

Converge: All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph, 10/9/12)

“Sadness Comes Home”

Converge: “Sadness Comes Home”

Being one of the most consistently devastating and innovative hardcore bands on the planet doesn’t come easy. In fact, it requires countless hours of hard work, a highly disciplined work ethic, and a level of stamina that even the youngest punks in the game can’t always muster.

For nearly 20 years, Salem, Massachusetts-based metalcore titan Converge has continually pushed its intense sound to new and progressively head-spinning extremes, hammering out 90-second explosions of speed and energy on one track, while delving into a gut-wrenching mixture of emotion and melody the next. Though expectations are best left wide open when approaching a new album from the group, two things remain constant: it’ll never be half-assed, and it most certainly won’t be boring.

ALARM's 50 Favorite Songs of 2012

ALARM’s 50 (+5) Favorite Songs of 2012

Last month ALARM presented its 50 favorite albums of 2012, an eclectic, rock-heavy selection of discs that were in steady rotation in our downtown-Chicago premises. Now, to give some love to tunes that were left out, we have our 50 (+5) favorite songs of last year — singles, B-sides, EP standouts, soundtrack cuts, and more.

ALARM's 50 Favorite Albums of 2012

ALARM’s 50 Favorite Albums of 2012

Another year, another torrential downpour of albums across our desks. As always, we encountered way too much amazing music, from Meshuggah to The Mars Volta, Converge, Killer Mike, P.O.S, and many more.

High on Fire

Video: High on Fire’s “Fertile Green”

The video for High on Fire’s “Fertile Green,” amazing in its ridiculousness, is a mini-masterpiece of psychedelic sci-fi. Follow “Balteazeen, the Christ Twin” in his quest to reach some sort of Goddess of the Sticky-Icky.

High on Fire

Q&A: High on Fire

This content appears in the July/August iPad edition of ALARM Magazine. Download it for free and keep reading!

High on Fire: De Vermis MysteriisHigh on Fire: De Vermis Mysteriis (Entertainment One, 4/3/12)

“Fertile Green”

High on Fire: “Fertile Green”

Oakland sludge trio High on Fire has kept the heavy-metal flame alive and burning for 14 years, having formed following guitarist/singer Matt Pike’s time in doom/stoner group Sleep. And with each new chapter in the band’s scorching legacy, Pike, drummer Des Kensel, and bassist Jeff Matz further challenge what a power trio can do. Somehow, over time, they’ve managed to grow louder, more epic, and even catchier.

The band’s sixth album, De Vermis Mysteriis, in many ways is classic High on Fire. Recorded with Converge’s Kurt Ballou, it balances punishing sludge riffs with epic solos and high-octane tempos. The first half alone is an exercise in ferocity: “Bloody Knuckles” pounds out a hook-laden variation of the band’s classic churn; “Fertile Green” lunges into an ultra-menacing stomp; “Madness of an Architect” taps into its Sabbath-y roots for old-fashioned doom.

Here Kensel speaks about going back to basics, writing in the studio, and “Eureka!” moments.

Sleep

Review: Sleep’s Dopesmoker

Sleep: DopesmokerSleep: Dopesmoker (reissue) (Southern Lord)

“Dopesmoker” (excerpt)

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Since its adulterated release and subsequent reissue in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Sleep’s Dopesmoker (also released as Jerusalem) has stood as a monolith of metal. With its weighty, repetitive, hour-long opus, the stoner/doom-metal trio played a pivotal role in the evolution of metal by pushing conventions, well, higher. But under the weight of contractual issues pertaining to its epically lethargic piece, the band broke up before seeing a complete version of Dopesmoker available to the public.

Morrow vs. Hajduch

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Beastwars

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

BeastwarsBeastwars: s/t (5/9/11)

Beastwars: “Damn the Sky”

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Morrow: Hailing from New Zealand, Beastwars is a four-piece stoner/sludge-metal outfit that specializes in down-tuned guitars, deep grooves, and gruff wailing. The group remains unsigned for now, but after hearing this self-titled album (which you can do for free at Beastwars’ Bandcamp page), it’s only a matter of time before an indie label picks them up. (Hello, Tee Pee?)

The music isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s a fist-pumping, head-banging good time — part Unsane, part old-school Soundgarden, and part High on Fire.

Hajduch: There is a major, major grunge influence at work here. “Lake of Fire” sounds a whole lot like a burlier “School” by Nirvana. The way the vocals interact with these huge riffs carries a definite Pacific Northwest influence. There’s also something about the riffs that remind me of Undertow-era Tool but with more of a classic-metal gallop to them.

I’m definitely shocked at how little exposure this band has gotten. This is a really solid stoner-metal album that should appeal to everybody who even slightly likes this kind of thing.

100 Unheralded Albums from 2010

Among the thousands of under-appreciated or under-publicized albums that were released in 2010, hundreds became our favorites and were presented in ALARM and on AlarmPress.com. Of those, we pared down to 100 outstanding releases, leaving no genre unexplored in our list of this year’s overlooked gems.

Contest: Win tickets to Riot Fest 2010 at the Congress

ALARM has two pairs of tickets to give away for the Congress Theater dates (Oct. 8 & 9) of Riot Fest 2010, Chicago’s annual punk/hardcore festival.  The entire shindig takes place October 6 – 10, 2010, and this year it expands to the Metro, Double Door, Subterranean, House of Blues, Cobra Lounge, and AAA.

To enter to win, enter your E-mail below for the biweekly ALARM newsletter, the Alarmist.

We’ll contact the winner via E-mail on September 27.

Update: Contest has ended.

On top of another reunion show from Snapcase and dozens of other performances, Riot Fest 2010 features bands such as Bad Religion, Anti-Flag, Propagandhi, Jello Biafra, Smoking Popes, Negative Approach, High on Fire, Torche, Kylesa, Circle Jerks, The Bronx, Corrosion of Conformity, Agnostic Front, and Cap’n Jazz.

Kylesa to release Spiral Shadow on Season of Mist

Just a year and a half after Static Tensions, psych-sludge quintet Kylesa will release Spiral Shadow, its fifth full-length album, on October 26 via Season of Mist. With the album, Kylesa’s cross-genre sound jumps from Prosthetic Records, which put out its last three discs.

The new album was produced again by Kylesa’s guitarist/vocalist Phillip Cope, who has manned the boards for Baroness and Withered.