High on Fire

De Vermis Mysteriis (eOne)

“Priestess of a timeless cup, the taker has looked through old eyes/To see why of religion’s course, my brother’s path goes so wide.” Jesus Christ, therein lies the concept – literally. Unknowable demon twin or no, the Oakland trio’s sixth battering ram rebounds from 2010’s scattershot Snakes for the Divine, blowtorching the veneer off previous summit Death Is This Communion in a shitstorm of scabrous distortion. Bombardier attack atop a Lemmy croak (“Spiritual Rites”) and psych-doom (“Madness of an Architect”) – no problem, but Matt Pike’s elegant lead on “Samsara” thins out the thickening sludge at the climax. ***.5

This article appears in August 10 • 2012.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.