Thriving on AC/DC’s tradition of making the same album over and over, High on Fire started getting stale in 2010 on Snakes for the Divine before bouncing back two years later with the PCP-like concept to De Vermis Mysteriis. On the Oakland trio’s seventh album, ingestions of new blood clearly continue. The band’s post-thrash attack still levels steel, but minor tweaks – snakefinger solos (“Slave the Hive”), waltz tempos (“The Sunless Years”), thrash dynamics (“Luminiferous”), and psychedelic haze (“The Cave”) – bolt a crushing new frame on a classic chassis.

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This article appears in August 14 • 2015.

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Michael Toland started writing about music in 1988 on the Gulf Coast, moved to Austin in early 1991, and has inflicted bylines upon the corporeal and digital pages of Pop Culture Press, The Big Takeover, Blurt, Amplifier, Austin.citysearch, the Austin American Statesman, Goldmine, Sleazegrinder, Rock & Roll Globe, High Bias, FHT Music Notes, and, since 2011, The Austin Chronicle.